


The Night Before the Night Before Christmas (aka the Long Night)

by Luthien



Series: Luthien Does Writer's Month 2019 [15]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Australia, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Australia, Christmas, Coffee, F/M, Hemsworths, Holiday Fling, Pool Sex, Shopping, Skinny Dipping, background Bronn/Melisandre, holiday romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-09-28 10:53:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20424770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/pseuds/Luthien
Summary: Brienne works out how to do her last minute Christmas shopping while potentially under siege by media, with a bit of help (and distraction) from Jaime and quite a bit more help from Bronn.Fill for Writer's Month 2019 Day 20: Weird





	1. Jaime

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry I disappeared for a little bit there. I got hit by a migraine that knocked me over for a few days. This particular story is going to be in <strike>two</strike> several chapters, so I thought I'd better at least post chapter 1 to let you know that I'm still here and the series is still going.
> 
> And yes, the end of Writer's Month is looming ever closer. I decided a while ago that I wasn't going to even attempt to do every daily prompt, but just use the ones that suit my plans for this universe. I still intend to do that, even though at this point I'm going to run out of month before I run out of storyline. There are about half a dozen instalments still to come, so I'll be writing those into September until I reach the conclusion of this caffeine-inspired (and fuelled) romance.
> 
> Thanks, as ever, to Telanu for the beta!

"Coffee, coffee, coffee," Brienne said, scanning the shelves with a look in her eye that was getting wilder by the second. "There must be something coffee-related that they'd like."

"If there is, I don't think you're going to find it in a supermarket," Jaime said, and then wished he hadn't as Brienne whirled around to face him. In other circumstances, he would have fully appreciated the fiery intensity of her stare, but sadly these weren't other circumstances.

"Then what do you suggest?" Brienne bit out, enunciating each syllable with painful precision.

Jaime had already suggested when they were still at the castle that she get Tyrion and Shae some macadamia-related products. It had seemed unlikely to him that Shae would, for example, ever have heard of macadamia and peppermint grass fed collagen brownie bites, much less tried them before. But Brienne had vetoed that idea before he'd even finished giving it voice. Apparently, Jaime was a _man_, which he did not at all dispute, but which also somehow meant that he didn't understand that these things had to be done in just the right way. People—by which Brienne seemed to mean _women_—expected it.

Now, Jaime inhaled as slowly as humanly possible while his mind raced. By the time his lungs were full to capacity, he'd lit on an idea. "What sorts of things do you usually get for family and friends at Christmas?" he asked. Well, it _was_ an idea, even if it wasn't a very good one.

Brienne's remarkable blue eyes widened, and she seemed to grow taller by the second, as she drew a breath and prepared to speak. She really was something, all fired up like this, just like the first time he'd seen her. Jaime wondered how long it would be before he could reasonably insist on taking her home to bed.

"I usually get them something they'd like—because I _know_ what they'd-" Brienne stopped, her brow creasing with a sudden thought. "Actually, my father and I did have sort of a tradition," she said, easing back to a stress level that could be no more than a DEFCON 3. "I didn't get a lot of presents when I was a child, because there was hardly any family left at that point, so Dad used to get me several small presents rather than one bigger one, so that I'd have plenty of things to unwrap on Christmas Day."

Jaime nodded encouragingly, even though he wasn't entirely sure that Brienne was taking things in the right direction if it turned out that her solution to the problem was to buy _even more_ presents for the people for whom she already didn't know what to buy.

"As I got older," Brienne continued, "I used to get him more than one present, as well. Sometimes, some of those presents were… pretty silly." She smiled, a little sadly. "Eventually, we settled on two presents each per year: a serious present, and a silly present."

"And when you say 'silly'...?" Jaime prompted.

Brienne's grin turned a little less sad and a little more mischievous. "The year of the giant inflatable dalek was particularly memorable. We posed it all over the farm and took pictures. It came to grief when the nanny goat tried to take a piece out of it."

"Yes, I'd call that memorable," Jaime said. He tried to picture his own father with an inflatable—or any sort of—dalek and came up blank. Father would probably have the daleks exterminated before they ever got near him. "What else?"

Brienne thought for a moment. "Well, there was the Christmas with the volcano lava lamp. And the year I gave Dad the dalek salt and pepper shakers. And then there was the rectangular TARDIS mug. And the spinning top desk toy made out of titanium. Oh, and the time the remote control dalek terrified our poor, jumpy rescue cat."

"I'm detecting a theme here," Jaime said, huffing a laugh.

"Dad was a big Doctor Who fan," Brienne said with a sigh, and all at once her expression was closed-in and sad again. She seemed suddenly smaller, somehow, and not in a good way. Not that a smaller Brienne would ever be a good thing. Jaime loved her magnificent proportions. She was like his own personal goddess.

"So, have you thought of a silly present for Tyrion or Shae?" he asked quickly, aware that he was trying to distract her from the thoughts that made her hurt. It wasn't something he would have done for anyone else, except possibly Tyrion—and now Tyrion had Shae he didn't need Jaime in the way he once had.

Brienne surveyed the shelves of coffee and coffee-related products. "You know, I think I have," she said, and took a couple of packets off one shelf. It was not one of the shelves that housed what Tyrion would have called the 'real coffee'. She tossed the packets into the green plastic basket she was carrying.

Jaime looked down into the basket and grinned. Tyrion was going to be absolutely _horrified_. He glanced around. No one seemed to be paying attention to them, or to have noticed that they were any less anonymous than any other customers in this supermarket. Yet. "Let's get going," he suggested. "Unless there's anything else you want to buy?"

Brienne shook her head. "I can't get what I need from a supermarket." She smiled at him, apparently unconscious of the way those words might be interpreted. She seemed strangely innocent at times, for all the delightful lack of inhibition she showed him when they were alone—and even, sometimes, when they were in public. He had the feeling that that was new for her, that she'd never been that way with any of the other men—boyfriends—she'd taken to her bed.

Boyfriends. Was that what he was? A boyfriend? He felt too old to use a word like that. Besides, Brienne most definitely did not make him feel like a _boy_, or at least not when they were anywhere other than the Macadamia Castle.

No, Jaime wasn't a boyfriend. _Lover_. That was the word he needed.

And a word wasn't all he needed right now. He stepped close. "Let's go back to our room and we can explore what else you might need," he murmured.

Brienne didn't reply, but he watched her throat as she swallowed and the flush bloomed along her neck. An answering heat flared in Jaime. God, he just wanted to take her in his arms and lick her all over, taste every last glorious inch of her skin, starting with that long, beautiful neck. He could-

"Yes, I'm positive that's them," a stranger's voice said in a loud whisper nearby. "Him and his dominatrix girlfriend."

"Are you sure?" hissed another voice. "What would they be doing in Woolies?"

"It has to be them. Look at how tall she is!" said the first voice, a bit louder now. "And he's stupidly hot. Enough to be a movie star."

"Shhh. They'll hear!"

Jaime glanced around and found two very young women, maybe twenty years old or so, standing at the end of the coffee aisle, staring at himself and Brienne. He drew himself up to his full height, shoulders back, chest out, looking straight down his nose, and gave them his best impersonation of a Tywin Lannister death glare.

The two girls went pale, one of them let out a squeak, and then they were gone. A few of the other nearby customers were starting to give Brienne and Jaime some not very subtle looks, though. Looks of puzzlement and dawning surprise. Jaime knew what that meant. It meant that they had to get out of here. Right now.

"Dominatrix?" Brienne spluttered, sounding outraged.

"It was sort of suggested in the text that went with the pictures. They called you 'Mistress Brianna', remember?" Jaime said, and watched her blanch. Yes, Brienne definitely had an innocent streak still. It was—God help him for even thinking in these terms but there was really nothing else for it—cute.

"Is _that_ what that was all about? I thought they were suggesting that I was your mistress or something!"

"That too," Jaime said. "Come on." They had no more time to waste standing around, talking. He took Brienne by the arm and started hustling her towards the checkouts.

"Jaime!" Brienne said, and stopped dead in her tracks, refusing to be hustled.

"We need to be somewhere other than here, Brienne," he told her, glancing meaningfully down the aisle. "Those pictures must be all over social media by now."

Brienne followed his gaze, saw a woman in shorts and a tank top standing there, openly staring at them, and her expression changed. "Let's go," she said.

They went, making their way as fast as they could without going so fast that they wound up attracting even more attention. They got through the self-service checkout with minimal fuss, apart from a middle-aged shop assistant wanting to know if they were interested in some sort of awful little plastic collectable available only from Woolworths.

"No," Jaime said.

"No kids," the shop assistant said with a weary grin, pocketing the little… thing once more.

"No kids," Jaime agreed. This was one of the many new experiences that Tyrion presumably had to look forward to in the years ahead, with the child that was on the way.

And then he was hurrying Brienne from the supermarket and through the shopping centre to the carpark, with no time to take that thought any further than Tyrion's future.

~*~

"What am I going to do?" Brienne asked, looking down at her menu as she shook her head in...well, not despair, exactly, but frustration. And it wasn't anything to do with the lunch options.

They were back at the resort, having a late lunch in the main restaurant. Technically, it wasn't open at this hour of the afternoon, but the maître d' had had no problem whatsoever in making an exception for Jaime Lannister and his companion.

"Work out what you want to buy, and then give Bronn a list, and he'll sort it out," Jaime suggested.

Brienne shook her head. "That won't work," she said. "I don't know what I want to buy. I need to wander around the shops for inspiration."

"Perhaps if you look online…"

Brienne shook her head. "I've tried that before. It's fine when I know what I want, but when I don't, I don't know what to search for. I _hate_ going to bricks and mortar shops, but right now I really need to."

Jaime didn't say it, because he didn't have to: there was no way on earth either of them could wander around the shops anonymously and unmolested this afternoon, and almost certainly not tomorrow, either. There had been several not-very-subtle-at-all cars parked outside the resort when they got back a little earlier. There were probably more assembled there now. Neither the media nor the public was going to leave the two of them in peace if they caught the slightest glimpse of them, which did not bode well for Brienne's Christmas shopping plans. She really should have bought a few packets of those macadamia brownie bites while she had the opportunity.

"I'll call Bronn," Jaime decided. "He's got a devious mind. He's bound to think of some angle that we haven't considered." He picked up his phone and put words into action while Brienne gave up any pretense of perusing the menu and watched him with hopeful eyes.

"We-ell," Bronn said, once Jaime had explained the situation to him. "Today's the 23rd, right?"

Jaime agreed that it was indeed the 23rd.

"That means that tonight's the night when everything in the big shopping malls stays open twenty-four hours, right?"

"I have no idea," Jaime admitted.

"Yeah, it is," Bronn said. "If you really want to go shopping before Christmas, then what say you drive up to the Gold Coast at, I dunno, two in the morning or so? The malls up there shouldn't be too crowded at that hour. It should give you a fighting chance, in any case."

It wasn't a bad suggestion, but Jaime had a better idea. "_You_ drive us up to the Gold Coast for dinner. We'll take a room up there, go out to dinner, have a few drinks or whatever, and then you can drive us to one of the malls in the early hours."

"Do I get to try the drinks or whatever as well?" Bronn wanted to know.

"Since you'll be driving, I think you already know the answer to that," Jaime said, "We'll expect you here at seven." He ended the call and put the phone down on the table. Bronn was a cheeky bugger. It was just as well he was so very useful.

"We're going to the Gold Coast for dinner?" Brienne asked, eyebrows raised.

Only then did Jaime realise that he hadn't actually asked her. "If you want to. We don't have to. I just thought we might as well make a night of it, since the malls up there are open all night tonight, and Bronn thinks going shopping at two in the morning is your best bet."

"That's… not a bad idea," Brienne had to agree. "It feels weird to even consider it, but it's really probably the best option, given the circumstances." She smiled, and he could see some of the tension leaving her.

He slipped off his shoe and found her instep with his foot, just as he had when they'd been sitting in the cafe this morning.

Brienne's smile deepened, and she leaned back in her chair, stretching from head to toe. Under the table, her other foot, which seemed to have somehow lost its shoe, slid up his leg and over his knee. Just as in the cafe this morning, Jaime's jeans suddenly felt too tight at the crotch.

He sent her a long, considering look and cleared his throat. "So, once we have lunch, we'll have several hours to fill before we need to get ready for the trip up to the Gold Coast," he said. "Whatever can we do to pass the time?"

"We'll think of something," Brienne said, head tilted as she looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes. Underneath the table, her foot slid higher.

Jaime smiled at her, a long, slow smile. "Yes, we'll think of something," he said.

He really did enjoy how beautifully uninhibited she could be when no one else was around.

~*~

"Where are we going for dinner?" Brienne asked, quite a while later, her hair brushing against Jaime's bare foot as she turned to look over her shoulder at him. The late afternoon sun streamed in through the slats of the blind, painting Brienne's fair, freckled skin in stripes of sunlight and shadow.

"Where would you like to go for dinner?" Jaime asked in return, rubbing his stubbled jaw against the sole of Brienne's foot until it arched and her toes wriggled.

Brienne let out a long sigh. "Wha- Oh. Dinner. Yes," she said. "Nowhere fancy, but still with good food. I've had a lot of seafood on this trip. Maybe something else this time. Curry? Is Indian a thing in Australia?"

"Every cuisine is a thing in Australia," Jaime said. "We'll find some quiet, _good_ Indian place near where we're staying. There's bound to be one."

"You have somewhere in mind? To stay, I mean." Brienne sat up, pulling her legs down and tucking them under her until her feet were curled up beside her.

Jaime was a little sad about that. He had grown quite fond of her feet in the time he'd been sharing a pillow with them this afternoon. On the other hand, now that Brienne was sitting up he had a better view of the rest of her. What you lost on the swings you gained on the roundabouts, as Aunt Genna was fond of saying, though she probably hadn't had this sort of situation in mind.

Probably.

Jaime made a point of stopping that train of thought in its tracks. "The company owns an apartment on the Gold Coast that I use sometimes," he told Brienne. "It's private, and probably a better idea than any hotel right at the moment."

Brienne nodded, looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes, her head tilted to one side and her whole body loose and relaxed, a world away from the tension of earlier in the day. "It's not quite what I'd planned for on this trip, but I'm not complaining." One corner of her mouth curled up in a private, mischievous little smile.

"What had you planned to do on this trip?" Jaime asked, his interest piqued. He hadn't thought much about what Brienne had planned to do during her time in Australia, apart from the fact that those plans had brought her to him. "What would you have been doing this week if things had gone as you intended?"

"Continued down the coast to Sydney and stayed there for the final few days before flying home, mainly. I really wanted to go and see something at the Opera House, but it turns out Christmas week isn't a good time for that. Nearly everything that was playing there even a week ago has finished its run, and all the new shows start up at the beginning of January, right after I go home."

Jaime refused to dwell on the idea of Brienne leaving. Instead, mind racing ahead as a plan of his own started to form, he said, as neutrally as he could, "The Sydney Festival runs for most of January. All the acts coming to town then will be getting ready for it this week."

"So I discovered," Brienne said with a little humph of disappointment. She shrugged. "But I'm sure Sydney has plenty else to offer."

"It does." Jaime sat up, leaning back against the pillows. "I'm from Sydney," he pointed out, waiting until her eyes met his and then holding her gaze.

"You are," Brienne said. Her eyes were so very blue. Her chest heaved in perfect time with his own, with each deep breath they took, as the moment went on and on, the awareness between them lengthening and growing heavy, just like his cock.

Synchronicity. Chemistry. Whatever it was, they had it in spades.

Brienne lifted a hand and, her eyes still locked on his, stroked almost absently along Jaime's bare thigh. He groaned, and stretched involuntarily, arching his hips, wanting her hand on him properly, wanting to thrust up against her palm. There was nothing left of their late afternoon languor.

"Come here," he said, and when he opened his arms to pull her to him, hers were already sliding around his neck.


	2. Brienne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne and Jaime go to the Gold Coast for dinner, in preparation for their middle of the night shopping trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Nire for audiencing and slipsthrufingers for the beta!

Brienne turned in front of the mirrored wardrobe door, surveying her outfit. It wasn't terribly dressed up, as evening clothes went, but it was the most dressed up she could manage with the clothes she had available. Jaime had agreed that they'd find a quiet restaurant, nothing fancy, for dinner tonight, but Brienne had a sneaking suspicion that her definition of 'nothing fancy' was very different from Jaime's—so she'd dressed up as best she could in her own version of the little black dress that went with everything.

Brienne's little black dress was neither little nor a dress, but it was at least black. The top was plain, with a scoop neck as deep as anything Brienne owned—which was not terribly deep—and long, floaty sleeves, in a light, very slightly sheer synthetic fabric. Underneath, she wore a black tank top that she usually used when working out. A silky camisole top would have worked better, given that she was going on what could only be described as a date, but Brienne had never owned anything as frivolous as a camisole. She'd never felt the need of it. Until now.

She'd paired the top with a pair of loose, black trousers in a slightly heavier fabric, and replaced the flat sandals she'd worn almost everywhere on this holiday with a pair of black open-toed, caged-style booties with a not-terribly-high block heel, which Margaery had made her buy. They looked something like the unholy offspring of a boot and a sandal.

Brienne twirled in front of the mirror again, and noted how her long gold drop earrings swung as she moved. They were her only touch of bling, reproductions of Roman earrings from the first Century BCE. Each was adorned with a large circle of deep blue lapis lazuli at the top against the ear lobe, and little balls of lapis also dangled from the ends.

It wasn't enough. It wasn't _nearly_ enough.

If Margaery were here, she would know how to dress for a date at an almost certainly fancy restaurant with a wealthy, gorgeous man who… wanted to take Brienne out to dinner. Somehow, being seen going out at night together made the whole situation more serious, more _fraught_, for Brienne, than anything else in this entire situation had done. Even the incident with the photographer. Spending half the day in bed naked and… intimate together was nothing compared to a few hours after dark, in public and clothed, indulging in a ritual that she'd always, _always_ failed at.

She was going to have to go as she was. It was going to have to do.

Brienne grabbed her evening bag—as plain and black as everything else she was wearing save the earrings—and picked up the small overnight bag she'd packed a few things in for tonight and tomorrow. She stopped in front of the mirror to apply a little more pale pink lipstick to her lips, and marched out of the bedroom much as a soldier might march out to face a firing squad.

Jaime was standing by the window, looking out to sea, yet again. He turned as she entered the room, and at first said nothing. He simply stared at her in silence.

Brienne looked away, setting her overnight bag down on the floor. She fidgeted with the strap of her handbag, willing him to say something. Anything.

Jaime came closer, looking her up and down. Brienne made herself look at him—look _down_ at him, because of course in these shoes she was several inches taller than usual. He didn't seem disappointed, though. In fact, there was a look in his eye that she was learning to recognise. It was a look that said he was already wondering whether their decision to go anywhere tonight was the wrong decision.

Brienne chanced a small smile.

Jaime smiled back, and cleared his throat. "You look…," he began, and stopped, brows creasing in an expression that wasn't quite a real frown. His eyes danced with… amusement? "You haven't been holding out on me, have you?" he asked.

It was Brienne's turn to frown. "No, I haven't," she said slowly, trying to quiet the little voice inside that was determined to convince her that Jaime was laughing at her attempts to dress for an evening out with him. What had she been thinking, to believe that this could work, even for as little as a week?

"You're not from Melbourne, are you?" Jaime asked, and the smile he'd clearly been trying to hold back refused to be restrained any longer. The look he sent her was frankly admiring, and frankly… frank. She hadn't been wrong about what she thought she'd seen in his eyes when she first entered the room.

Her sudden change in mood was palpable, like a weight being lifted from her when she least expected it. "No," Brienne said, and now it was her turn to try to hold back a smile, even if it was one of dizzying relief. "Though from what you've said of Melbourne, I suspect some things—like the weather—might be hauntingly familiar to someone from London."

"Maybe you'll be in a position to find out for yourself sometime," Jaime said. His tone was light, but the suggestion itself was not.

Once Christmas Day was past, Brienne would have only three full days left in Australia. That wasn't enough time to do much at all, particularly if she and Jaime kept getting… distracted. Visiting Melbourne would mean staying in Australia beyond Sunday, and that was something she knew she could not do. The events of today had only served to emphasise that.

She just had to keep reminding herself of that.

"Maybe," she said at last. She looked him up and down. For the first time since she had known him, Jaime wasn't wearing jeans, or at least not blue jeans—when he was wearing anything at all, anyway. He'd exchanged his blue jeans for a pair of equally tight black ones, and he wore a short-sleeved button-down shirt, open at the collar. The shirt was patterned, depicting a mish-mash of images of a great, golden lion with splashes of red and pale blue on a light background. It should have looked garish, and the fact that it didn't was probably related to the fact that 'Givenchy' was embroidered in cursive along the top of the breast pocket, and that it appeared to be made out of silk.

That, and that Jaime was wearing it. Brienne would never tell him, but he would look good to her even if he were wearing rags and covered in mud. But since he was wearing this shirt… well, Brienne wouldn't be the only one to think that he looked good. She would be the only one on his arm, though. She felt vindicated in deciding to dress up as much as she could.

"What does this look mean?" she asked, letting her gaze linger here and there as she looked him up and down again. "Half Melbourne and half Byron Bay?"

Jaime laughed, an easy, carefree sound. "Something like that," he said. "Are you ready to go? Bronn's waiting downstairs." He held out his arm to her, and Brienne took it, but when she would have moved toward the door, Jaime took her other arm and pulled her close. He kissed her, and not a brief peck on the lips, either. This was a long kiss, a kiss that took its time, exploring and asking silent questions that Brienne could only answer by kissing him back. "You look sensational," he said quietly, when at last he drew back the tiniest bit.

Brienne would probably have blushed at the compliment, except that her cheeks already felt hot, and were probably wildly flushed.

"Thank you. You don't look bad yourself," she said. She looked down at her bag before he could respond. "Now I need to reapply my lipstick." It wasn't a complaint but just a simple statement of fact. She opened her bag, but Jaime's hand stopped her when she would have hunted inside for the tube.

"Put some more on in the car when we get there," he said, his voice still quiet, and warm with promise. And of course, Bronn was driving them tonight. They'd be sitting together in the back of the car.

"All right," Brienne said, and zipped her bag shut again. She picked up her overnight bag, strode across to the door and opened it. If they were going to go out, then they'd better actually leave the room. It felt like a minor victory when Jaime followed her out the door, toting a bag of his own.

Bronn was waiting for them in the underground carpark, standing next to yet another generic white SUV. The only difference between this one and the one they'd been driving around in this afternoon was that this SUV had heavily tinted windows.

"The resort's security has chased the cameras away for the moment," Bronn said, after he'd stowed their luggage in the boot and opened the back door of the SUV. "There are bound to still be a few lurking in the bushes, but I can shake them off if need be."

Brienne and Jaime settled into the back seat, and when Brienne laid her hand on the seat between them, Jaime's hand came immediately to cover hers. He kept doing that, and Brienne kept letting him. She didn't remove her hand this time, either. Bronn didn't say anything, but she was aware of him watching them in the rearview mirror.

As soon as Bronn drove out of the main gate of the resort, he slammed his foot on the accelerator and they took off down the road.

Brienne clutched her seatbelt, while Jaime's fingers enfolded her other hand and he said through tight lips, "Perhaps a little warning next time, Bronn?"

"Sorry," Bronn said, though he sounded amused rather than sorry, as he took a sharp left turn at such speed that Brienne was astounded that the SUV didn't tilt sideways on two wheels. "Just ditching paps, in case there are any on our tail."

Jaime continued to hold Brienne's hand tight as Bronn zipped through the narrow back streets of Byron Bay, until finally they made it to the highway and their vehicle became just another white SUV amongst the other traffic.

Jaime kissed the back of Brienne's hand and released it. She folded her hands in her lap, very aware of the way Bronn kept glancing at the rearview mirror.

Brienne looked out of the window. There wasn't much of interest to be seen. The scenery outside was mostly just eucalyptus trees, their dull olive-green leaves outlined with gold in the last rays of sun as sunset drew near.

"Do you have any thoughts about what you're going to buy at the mall tonight?" Jaime asked after a while.

"I have a general idea of what to get for Shae," Brienne said. "Something arty. I'm not sure quite what yet. I think I'll know it when I see it. I hope." Something like the scarf she'd seen in the castle gift shop this afternoon might be just the thing, provided she could find a scarf with a design that was a little more, well, arty, and a little less mass-produced.

Jaime nodded. "What about Tyrion?"

Brienne sighed in despair. "I have absolutely no idea. What does Tyrion like, apart from coffee?"

"Shae," Jaime said promptly, with only the very barest hint of a smile.

"Apart from coffee _and Shae_," Brienne amended, giving him _a look_.

Jaime grinned at her, completely unrepentant.

"He used to be all 'wine, women and song'," Bronn commented, and Brienne remembered Jaime saying that Bronn and Tyrion were old friends. "Not so much the women, now, obviously. Or more just the one woman, I suppose. And the song… well, yeah, there's the woman, so it's more just songs for two these days." He lifted one hand from the steering wheel and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "And actually the woman's also had a bit of an effect on the wine side of things as well, but he still likes a drop of the good stuff, when he can get it."

"That's not a bad idea," Jaime said, apparently talking to Bronn though he was still looking at Brienne. "Get Tyrion a bottle of wine and he'll be happy."

"What sort of wine does he like?" Brienne asked, hoping that what Bronn called 'the good stuff' wasn't likely to set her back hundreds of dollars.

"I can help you choose it," Jaime said. "He likes what he calls 'interesting' up and coming winemakers as well as the usual Grange and Arbour Red."

If it had been anyone else of her acquaintance speaking, Brienne would have been sure that that was a joke, but coming from Jaime… No, it wasn't a joke. He lived in a world where people drank Penfolds Grange and wines from the Arbour as a matter of course.

"Thanks," Brienne said. "I don't know a lot about wine."

"That's settled, then." Somehow, the way Jaime said it, it was more than just Tyrion's Christmas present that was settled. But really, hardly anything was settled, hardly anything at all, beyond the reality of Sunday and her plane ticket home.

For a start, there was still one name on her Christmas list left with a question mark beside it.

Brienne looked out of the window again. She had no idea what to get Jaime for Christmas. No idea at all.

~*~

It was dark by the time Bronn pulled up in front of a large, luxurious-looking beachfront hotel. There was no restaurant to be seen.

"The restaurant's inside," Jaime breathed against Brienne's ear before he dipped his head to plant a kiss against her neck.

"I thought this restaurant wasn't supposed to be fancy?" Brienne said, pulling away from him to take a better look at the hotel's facade. Yes, it was definitely luxurious, and rated five stars without a doubt.

"Only a little bit fancy. It's popular with lots of people and no one ever gets really formal around here anyway. Not unless they're going to some sort of official function." Jaime grimaced, and Brienne wished she hadn't asked.

She jumped as the car door opened, and Bronn gave them both a little nod. Jaime didn't seem surprised, but then Jaime had probably never opened a car door for himself in his life before he was old enough to learn to drive. No one had ever opened a car door for Brienne before.

Bronn gave Jaime what could only be described as a questioning look, and Brienne felt as if she were a teenager caught making out behind the bike sheds at school. Jaime had migrated across the car seat in the course of the hour or more since they'd left Byron Bay, and there was now very little space—very little going on none—between him and Brienne. She could still feel the imprint of Jaime's lips, hot like a brand, in the hollow where her jaw met her neck just below her ear. If Bronn had opened that car door even five seconds earlier there would have been no need for questioning looks. He would already have had most of the answers he needed.

She waited for the familiar heat of embarrassment to creep up her neck. And waited a few seconds more.

There was nothing.

She got out of the car, and waited on the pavement for Jaime to join her.

"See you later!" Bronn called out the window of the SUV as he waved and drove off.

"What?" Jaime asked as they mounted the steps that would take them up to the hotel's front doors.

"What do you mean, what?" Brienne replied.

Jaime stopped at the top of the stairs. "There's something on your mind. Between the car and here, something changed."

"You can tell that?" Brienne asked, so surprised that she forgot to deny that there was anything in particular on her mind.

"Of course I can," Jaime said, and took her face in his hands. He didn't kiss her but just looked into her eyes and… yes, of course he could tell. Just like she was attuned to every little change in his mood.

"I think you might have cured me of blushing," Brienne confessed.

"Really?" Jaime grinned. "I almost feel sorry about it. I love the way you go—went—pink at the slightest provocation."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I'll still go pink." Brienne tilted her head, not trying to look flirty, exactly, because that would just be ridiculous for someone like her, but… all right, maybe a little bit flirty. "Just not from embarrassment."

Jaime lifted one eyebrow. "Really?" he said again.

"I'm still sunburnt," she pointed out.

Jaime threw back his head and laughed. Brienne couldn't help but grin. She was still grinning when he took her hand and led her through the hotel's doors. They stopped at reception, where, to Brienne's surprise, Jaime checked in. He handed Brienne a key card almost identical to the one that opened their suite in Byron Bay.

"I thought we were going to stay in an apartment," she hissed, as they moved away from the reception desk.

"We were. But after you suggested Indian food, I got to thinking about this place and if we were going to be eating in the restaurant anyway, it seemed easier to stay in the hotel." He shrugged, as if choosing to stay in a five star hotel on the spur of the moment was just something that one might do.

And of course, in his world, one did.

Brienne nodded. "Okay," she said, wishing she'd taken her overnight bag out of the car when she had the chance.

"Bronn will take our luggage up to the room while we eat," Jaime said, as if reading her mind.

It was uncanny.

They left reception and moved into a huge, plant-festooned space with a high ceiling, filled with comfortable-looking chairs clustered around low tables. There was a bar along one wall, and in the corner a man in a dinner suit played a large, black grand piano.

"Only a little bit fancy?" Brienne asked, staring pointedly at the piano.

"The restaurant's at the back," Jaime said, and led her beyond the room to a short corridor that opened out onto the front of a restaurant called, according to the signage along the front, Koko's.

They were greeted at once, and led through the restaurant to their table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so this got really incredibly long. I've chopped it up into several chapters as a result. Chapter 3 will be posted tomorrow.


	3. Brienne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner and what happens after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Nire for audiencing and slipsthrufingers for the beta!

The interior of the restaurant was modern and Indian. Modern Indian, but modern Australian, too, Brienne was pretty sure. She'd never been in an Indian restaurant quite like it. Her local Indian place back in south London was cheap and cheerful, decorated with a certain endearing tackiness in red wallpaper and lots of fake gold.

There was nothing remotely fake about this place, though it remained to be seen if the food was anything like as authentic as her local back home.The light fittings hung low, their large, sinuous shapes suggesting India, somehow, without quite stating it. But the rest… There was a long, brilliantly lit bar all along one wall, and behind it was just about every spirit and liqueur under the sun. The stools that lined the bar were all occupied, even though this was a Monday night. A row of high, round tables of polished wood ran through the middle of the restaurant, and beyond them were some booths with cushioned seats and tables at the normal sitting level. On the far side of the restaurant, by the windows, were fancier tables, these covered in white cloths, and beyond them an outside area with still more tables, less formal and made of glass. The restaurant backed directly onto the water, its windows looking out across a narrow waterway to the lights of the Gold Coast. The front of the hotel looked out across a beach, so it must be built on some sort of very narrow peninsula, Brienne realised.

Almost every table in the restaurant was occupied, and the whole place buzzed with energy. It made Brienne feel weary just contemplating an hour or two in this place. Margaery, an extrovert to her very core, would have loved it, but Brienne was… not an extrovert.

But the waiter who'd greeted them led them through the crowd of people and past all of the tables, out onto the terrace and right to the end of it, then up some narrow stairs, leaving the crush of people and all the attendant noise behind them.

The upstairs room was quiet. The decor was similar to the main part of the restaurant, but here there was a lot more space between the tables, only one of which was currently occupied. The floor was covered in plush, beautiful rugs in shades of red, gold and black, which absorbed the sound of every footfall; an even greater contrast to the clatter of many shoes on the hardwood floors downstairs.

The waiter led them over to a table by the window, pulled out Brienne's chair for her to sit down, handed them each a leather-bound menu, and then, with a bow, left them alone.

"Do you approve?" Jaime asked, setting down his menu on the table in front of him. For the first time all evening, he looked a tiny bit uncertain, as if he were no longer sure that he was reading her right.

Brienne sat there and just breathed in the calm and quiet for a moment. Maybe this evening was going to turn out all right after all. "Yes," she said, "I do. It's not the sort of Indian restaurant I'm used to, but if that was all I wanted I would have stayed at home."

Jaime's smile was part relief, part amusement. "I'm glad you said that."

"Why?" Brienne asked. "Why, in particular, I mean." There was something about that smile.

"You'd probably better take a look at the menu."

Brienne opened the menu, and looked. At first, it seemed reassuringly normal, with familiar words like _bhaji, samosa, kofta, masala, paneer_ and _biryani_ popping up frequently. But then Brienne stopped to read the descriptions, and she realised that this _really_ wasn't the sort of Indian restaurant that she was used to. The samosas had beef and galangal in them yes, but also _eucalyptus_, while a dish that would have been a simple beef vindaloo in any other Indian restaurant, included quail eggs, cauliflower puree and pickled onions. But the dish that truly caught her eye and would not let her skim past was something called Mangalorean Bugs. The description did not help: 'Fresh local bugs marinated in chardonnay, lemon quinoa and coconut gassi'.

Brienne raised her eyes from the menu and found Jaime's watching her. "Tell me that they're not serving insects here."

Jaime's eyebrows rose. "I don't think so. Where is it listed on the menu?"

Brienne silently handed over her menu, pointing at the dish in question.

"Oh, _bugs_," he said, his brow clearing in sudden comprehension. "They're not insects. They're seafood. A sort of crustacean. The full name is Moreton Bay bugs, and they're right that they're local. The bay is just to the north of here, on the eastern side of Brisbane."

"It wouldn't have hurt to put the full name on the menu," Brienne muttered.

"You don't have to eat them. There are plenty of other dishes to try." Jaime sounded eminently reasonable. Too reasonable. The amusement was dancing in his eyes. Again.

"No, I'm going to have to order that one. I need to see one of these for myself, and probably take pictures as well." Margaery would demand photographic evidence once she heard about the bugs, so Brienne had better make sure she had some.

They perused the rest of the menu, and when a waitress came over to their table a couple of minutes later, they were ready to order. As well as the bug dish, Brienne ordered the bhajis to begin with, mainly because she'd never had them with prawn, samphire, onion _and_ peanut chutney before, while Jaime ordered a half dozen Sydney rock oysters with finger lime, and a main that was supposedly a chicken dish, but also featured lamb mince, quail eggs—they seemed to have a thing for those here—kashmari sauce and gunpowder potatoes.

It was a relief to get the food out of the way and turn to the wine list. Brienne asked for a glass of dry white wine. That was usually a safe option, and even if she'd never been to a restaurant quite like this one before, after growing up by the sea, she was well aware that white wine was usually paired with seafood.

Neither of them said anything for a moment after the waitress took the menus away. Brienne was a little surprised that Jaime's foot hadn't come questing under the table in search of hers yet. It had seemed to be becoming a habit with him. She was just about to break the silence when she heard a small commotion on the other side of the room. She glanced over to the door in time to see a party of four entering. One of the men seemed strangely familiar. He was tall with long-ish blond hair. For a second she thought she must be seeing things, but then the man turned and Brienne could see his face properly. There could be no doubt. She looked quickly back at Jaime, making a conscious effort to shut her mouth, which was hanging open in surprise.

"What's the matter?" Jaime asked. "Not another former travelling companion you've failed to mention?"

"No, nothing like that," Brienne said in a voice so low that Jaime had to lean forward to hear properly. "It's him. The Thor actor. The _Hemsworth_."

Jaime turned slightly in his seat to check his watch, and when he looked up he glanced across at the table where the new arrivals were being seated. "So it is," he said calmly. "I didn't know that you were a fan."

"I'm not!" Brienne hissed. "Well, not really. I just… He's been on my mind a bit lately."

"Oh?" Jaime said.

"I already knew that he lives somewhere near Byron Bay, and when I met you in the cafe…"

"Yes?" Jaime said, but the look on his face said 'no'—as in, he had no idea where she was going with this.

"Well…" Brienne's face felt warm, even though it wasn't the scorching heat of her usual self-conscious blush. Apparently she wasn't _quite_ cured of all visible reaction to embarrassment just yet. "When I first saw you, I wondered if you might be a stray Hemsworth, working as a barista between acting gigs. Just one of the lesser-known ones, obviously. Not Thor or anything."

"Not Thor or anything," Jaime echoed, staring at her. His mouth was not hanging open like some country yokel amazed at the sights to be seen in the Big Smoke, as Brienne's had been a moment ago, but it still wasn't quite closed, either. After a moment, he remembered to close his mouth, frowned, and asked, "Why would you think I was a Hemsworth?"

"Well," Brienne said. "Um, you were tall and blond and… well, gorgeous, and you were in a town not far from where Hemsworths were known to be, and so I… wondered." She looked out of the window at the lights shining on the other side of the inky water.

She started as something touched her foot, and when she looked over at Jaime he had a huge grin on his face. "So you took one look at me and decided I was 'gorgeous'," he said, as his foot rubbed slowly up and down along her shin.

"Well, you are," Brienne said, not knowing where to look and yet somehow winding up looking straight into his eyes. Green eyes that seemed to see her clearly, to see everything that she was, and yet somehow still appreciated the sight. "You must know that you are. People must have said, before now."

"People," Jaime agreed, "but not you. You've never commented one way or the other about how I look. Until now."

Part of Brienne wanted to run. She wanted to hide in the ladies' room for at least ten minutes, or maybe ten hours. Or maybe she could just take off down the stairs and down to the street and hail a taxi or…

"Of course I like the way you look." She closed her eyes, but not really so she could hide from his searching gaze. Or not only because of that. His foot was still moving up and down her leg, slowly, soothingly, and she concentrated on the feel of it for a moment before she opened her eyes again. "But that's not why I slept with you. Or not only because of that."

"I'm relieved to hear it," Jaime said. He wasn't grinning any more. The look in his eyes was serious.

"It's that thing we both feel, that… _something_ that you mentioned this morning. The way you can touch me and whatever I was about to say flies right out of my head. The way we can be in a room together and it's as if there's no one and nothing else there but the two of us."

"Except if there's a Hemsworth present," Jaime said.

"Even when there's a Hemsworth present."

"Sauvignon Blanc?"

They both turned in surprise to find the waitress standing by their table, a bottle of wine in one hand and a tray carrying a beer and a beer glass in the other.

"Thank you," Brienne said, as the waitress poured a little of the wine into her wine glass to try. She nodded to the waitress after she'd tasted it, and the waitress poured a glassful. The wine filled less than half the glass, because the restaurant's wine glasses were modern and enormous, but Brienne was pretty sure that she didn't need any more than that. She took a sip as the waitress set down the bottle of beer and glass in front of Jaime. The wine was dry, but with a zesty, slightly fruity edge to it.

It would be easy to drink. She took a bigger sip.

Jaime poured the beer into his glass and raised it. "To… shopping in the middle of the night," he said with a wink.

"Shopping in the middle of the night." Brienne raised her glass, and clinked it against his.

"And to whatever two gorgeous people choose to do together between now and then," Jaime added.

It was just as well that Brienne hadn't yet raised her glass to her lips, because she would have surely choked on her wine.

"Don't make jokes like that, Jaime!" she said.

He shrugged. "I'm not joking."

"That's not funny." Brienne looked out of the window rather blindly. After a moment, she felt Jaime's foot touch her leg rather hesitantly.

"I'm really not joking," he said softly. "I'd never call myself gorgeous. I look in the mirror and all I see is me. It's up to other people to decide whether they find me attractive or not. And the same goes for you."

Brienne made herself look at him again. He seemed so sincere. She heaved a sigh. "I know that when I look in the mirror, all I see is me, and every man I've ever met has made it more than clear that I'm not mistaken about what my reflection tells me."

"Except me," Jaime said. "Every man you've met _except me_."

"I really want to believe you, Jaime. I do," Brienne said, and she couldn't stop her chin from quivering ever so slightly.

"You know, I hope that we cross paths with Hunt again," Jaime said conversationally, "because I'd really like to get the chance to knock him down again." He reached out across the table and covered Brienne's hand with his. She didn't try to pull her hand away, and let his thumb stroke along the back of it. Meanwhile, beneath the table, his foot continued to stroke up and down her leg, matching the rhythm of his thumb. "I'm the one who gets to decide if the woman I'm with looks gorgeous, and I say you look gorgeous, so you're just going to have to accept that."

Brienne smiled, tremulously, though it was just her lower lip that quivered this time.

Beside the table, someone cleared their throat. Brienne drew back her hand, and looked up to find the waitress standing there with their entrees.

"Bhajis?" the waitress asked.

Jaime lifted a hand to indicate the place setting in front of Brienne, and the waitress quickly set down the two dishes and disappeared again. Her timing had been impeccable. Brienne used the excuse of the food to keep her attention on her plate and not look at Jaime again until she had to.

Her mind was a whirl of words and images and emotions and who knew what else. He really thought she was gorgeous? He liked kissing her and having sex with her, there could be no doubt about that. He even liked spending time with her when they weren't doing either of those things. But gorgeous? How could he think she was gorgeous? Except, clearly, that he did, or thought he did. Was there even any difference between thinking it and thinking that he thought it? Brienne had no idea. She was thinking herself into incoherence.

She tried a bhaji, with a little bit of the peanut chutney. Prawn, onion and peanut was not a combination of flavours she'd ever tried before, she was almost positive, but it was surprisingly tasty. She took another bite, before daring to glance over at Jaime's plate. He'd cut open one of the small, red fruits that had accompanied his oysters in the shell, and was spooning out little translucent balls from inside the fruit onto the oysters. She remembered that he'd ordered oysters with finger lime, and yes, the fruit was a little like a finger in shape, but it really didn't look much like any lime Brienne had ever seen.

"What does it taste like?" she asked, curious.

"Try one," Jaime said, offering the plate to Brienne.

She hesitated a moment, but then said, "Why not?" and, belatedly, "Thank you," before taking one of the oyster shells and using her fork to help convey both oyster and the finger lime balls, or whatever they were, to her mouth. The oyster wasn't all that different from other oysters she'd had, but the flavour of citrus exploded across her tongue as the little lime balls burst one by one. Brienne's eyes widened. "That's extraordinary," she said.

Jaime grinned. "It's not bad. They call those lime caviar, or lime pearls."

"I can see why," Brienne said. "Would you like to try the bhaji?" she added, suddenly hearing Aunt Lizzie's voice telling her always to remember to return courtesy with courtesy.

Jaime shook his head. "Thanks, but I've had them before. Those are yours."

They ate in silence for a little while after that, but the atmosphere at the table was more relaxed than it had been at any time since they'd sat down. Brienne hadn't quite agreed with Jaime that he could think her gorgeous, or say that he did, but she wasn't disputing it directly, and for the moment that seemed to be enough.

"A woman over there keeps looking at you," Jaime said quietly when they'd finished the first course and their empty plates had been whisked away.

Brienne blinked. "Over where?"

"Over at the table of Hemsworths."

Brienne glanced out of the corner of her eye, as surreptitiously as she could, but no one seemed to be looking their way. "Which one?" she asked. There were two women at the other table.

"The one with long blonde hair," Jaime said.

The blonde woman was small, and delicate and beautiful, with model-perfect features. Of course she was. Brienne had no idea why a woman like that would be looking her way, except for the obvious: that Brienne was everything that the woman was not. She probably thought that Brienne didn't belong here, and Brienne almost agreed with her about that—until she looked over at Jaime and found him looking at her, yet again.

Gorgeous. He'd said she was gorgeous.

Brienne took another sip of her wine. The level of liquid in her glass seemed to have decreased quite a bit. She might order another glassful when their mains arrived. She thought she might have need of it.

Their mains arrived not long after, and Brienne took the opportunity to order that second glass of wine. The bug turned out to be a fairly small, flat clawless lobster. It lay curled and shell-less across the centre of the turquoise-coloured plate, a little like a crescent moon, a rich red curry sauce surrounding it, and a wall of saffron rice covered in pink rose petals encircling all the rest. It looked like a small, perfect work of art. It seemed almost a shame to touch it, and then Brienne remembered that she'd been going to take a picture of it, and reached into her bag to retrieve her phone. She took several pictures of her plate, from different angles, and then, on impulse, she pointed the phone at Jaime and took one of him as well.

"You should have given me some warning," he protested.

Brienne looked down at the image on her screen. He was smiling, fingers curled around his beer glass as if he were about to pick it up. The look in his eyes was deep and intense as he stared up at her from the phone, frozen in that moment. No one should look that good in a picture when they were taken unawares. _Brienne_ wouldn't, no matter how many times Jaime called her gorgeous.

"I wanted to get a candid shot," she said.

Jaime didn't reply, but reached into his pocket—and then he was taking a picture of her!

"You should have warned me!" she said.

"I wanted to get a candid shot," he said, and winked at her—damn him!—before looking down at the screen of his phone and smiling at whatever unprepared horror he saw there. Then he pocketed his phone, picked up his knife and fork, and began to eat as if nothing at all had happened.

There was really nothing else for it but for Brienne to do the same.

"Oh," she said, after she'd swallowed the first bite. She tasted perfectly blended spices, plus ginger and coconut—and was that tamarind? The curry was hot, but not so hot that it overpowered the delicate flavour of the lobster.

"Glad you ordered the bug after all?" Jaime asked, watching her. His eyes always seemed to be on her.

"Yes," she said, "though why they couldn't have simply called it 'lobster' is beyond me."

"Maybe they just like messing with the minds of unsuspecting British tourists," Jaime suggested, and then winced as Brienne kicked him under the table.

Belatedly, she remembered that the shoes she had on tonight were rather more solid than the sandals she'd been wearing for the past few weeks. "Sorry!" she said. "Did I hurt you?"

He affected a mournful look. "I think you're going to have to kiss it better for me." His eyes were laughing at her, but not just laughing.

Brienne swallowed, even though there was nothing in her mouth, but she made herself roll her eyes. "You really can't do better than a line like that?"

"Oh, I can," Jaime said. It sounded like a promise. "And I will, as soon as we get through this meal." Yes, definitely a promise.

Brienne didn't reply. How did you reply when a man said something like that to you in public? She concentrated on the bug in front of her. It wasn't what she wanted to be looking at, but she really didn't dare look at Jaime right now. She raised her fork to her lips and ate another mouthful. Somehow, the spices weren't as vibrant as before, the lobster meat not quite as sweet and delicately flavoured. She ate another mouthful, and then another.

Beneath the table, Jaime's toe touched the bare skin just above the top of her bootie, and Brienne's head shot up to stare at him.

"Ah, that's better," Jaime said. "I almost thought you'd forgotten I was here."

"The opposite of that," Brienne said, her voice somehow so hoarse that the words almost got stuck in her throat.

Jaime's eyes darkened, and his toe stilled against her shin. "Let's go upstairs." His voice sounded as hoarse as hers. "We can get them to send the rest of this up to us." He glanced at their hardly touched plates.

God. It would be obvious, so very, _very_ obvious, if they left like this in the middle of the meal. "All right," Brienne heard herself say.

Jaime signalled their waitress, and she came hurrying over. "We'd like this packed up and sent up to our room," he said, not looking at her. His eyes were still on Brienne.

"Of course, sir," the waitress said.

Jaime's toe was suddenly gone from her leg. He wasn't touching her. It almost _hurt_ not to be in physical contact with him. He must have slipped his foot back into his shoe with lightning speed because suddenly he was on his feet. Brienne got up almost as quickly, and took his hand, all but grabbing it in her need to have his skin against hers. Somewhere, anywhere.

Jaime smiled at her, a heated, deadly serious smile. "Let's go," he said.

"Let's," Brienne agreed.

They were almost across the room to the door, just passing the table of Hemsworths, when Brienne felt a touch on her elbow. She stopped, and looked around to find the blonde woman who'd been watching her earlier looking up at her.

"I just wanted to tell you: good for you!" the woman said, one delicate little hand clenching in her lap. "Never let those media bastards get you down." She smiled. "Enjoy the rest of your evening."

"Thank you, and enjoy the rest of yours," Brienne said, slightly taken aback. And then Jaime was tugging at her hand, impatient—an impatience that matched Brienne's own. She managed a little wave, and then they were moving again, out the door and down the stairs and through the downstairs area of the restaurant, out the main door and into the hotel beyond.

They didn't go back through the piano bar. Instead, Jaime led her down a deserted corridor to the lifts. The lift doors opened for them at once, and as soon as they were inside it, Brienne was kissing Jaime, letting out all the pent up feeling that had been building inside her for what seemed like hours.

She drew back, only realising then that she had Jaime pinned against the side of the lift. He grinned at her. "That's the sort of enthusiasm I approve of," he said, feeling down beside him with one hand and pressing one of the buttons. The lift doors closed.

And then there was just the touch of him, the feel of him, the smell of him, as he kissed her and she kissed him back, and wished they were already in their room.

The lift gave a little 'ding' as they reached their floor. They parted reluctantly. Brienne's lips were tingling, and she felt as if her entire body was throbbing with want. Jaime looked ravaged and wrecked, all flushed and with his hair sticking out in all directions. When had she done that? Brienne didn't remember.

"The room's just down the end of this corridor," Jaime said, taking her hand again.

They covered the length of the corridor in what must have been very nearly Olympic record time, and Jaime fumbled with the keycard with one hand while his other arm was wrapped around Brienne and she pressed kisses into his neck.

The door clicked open without warning and they almost fell into the room. Jaime had her up against the wall before the door had even shut behind them. "My turn," he said, raining kisses along her neck, mapping a path up to her lips.

"No, actually it's my turn," said a voice that belonged to neither of them. "Sorry to interrupt," Bronn continued, though he didn't look very sorry. He was grinning.

"This had better be good," Jaime said, his hands falling to his sides as Brienne looked anywhere but at Bronn.

"I thought you'd want to know that we've run into a little snag with that thing that you wanted me to arrange tonight."

"A snag," Jaime said. "What sort of snag?"

"Melisandre says that a dress isn't enough to give her an idea of someone's measurements. Not for the sort of thing you want. She needs to measure the actual person." Bronn nodded over to a chair, where Brienne's overnight bag sat, the dress she'd packed to wear in the morning laid over the back of the chair.

"Have you been going through my things?" Brienne demanded, the heat of thwarted passion turning quickly into a fire fuelled by outrage.

"It's my fault," Jaime said quickly. "I'm getting a… garment made for you, as a… well, as part of your Christmas present. I told Bronn to take your dress to the seamstress so that she could work out your measurements, but apparently that won't do." He lifted her hand to his lips. "Forgive me?"

What was Brienne supposed to say to that? She didn't know whether she was smiling or frowning. Maybe both at once. "Don't do something like that again without asking me first," she said.

"I won't," Jaime promised, and kissed her hand again. He looked into her eyes, and Brienne realised to her dismay that she'd already forgiven him.

She smiled, because what else could she do? Bronn was still in the room.

"Yes, all right, all right," Bronn said. "Now that there's no more trouble in paradise, could we return to the little problem of the dress? Melisandre says she needs the measurements tonight, and to remind you that she's already doing you a huge favour considering that Christmas is the day after tomorrow."

"She wants us to go over there _now_?" Jaime asked. He didn't sound pleased.

"Right now," Bronn said. "Unless you want the dress for New Year instead of Christmas?"

Jaime sighed, and turned to Brienne. "Do you mind very much?" he asked. "It will mean delaying… things, but I think you'll like what I have in mind."

It wasn't clear whether he was referring to the dress or what he had in mind for the next few hours. Maybe he meant both.

"All right," Brienne said. "I… I hope you're not planning anything too extravagant for Christmas, are you Jaime, because-"

He stopped her protests with his mouth, just one hard, brief kiss this time, and said, "No, not _too_ extravagant."

And with that answer, Brienne had to be content. For now, though she had a sinking feeling that Jaime's definition of 'extravagant' was rather different from her own. "All right, then. Let's go and see this seamstress," she said.

Jaime smiled, and kissed her hand _again_.

Bronn muttered something unintelligible, but his exasperated tone was unmistakable. "I'll bring the car around to the front," he said, and departed out the door, leaving them alone.

He was back almost immediately, carrying a couple of plastic bags. "I met the delivery guy from the restaurant in the hallway. Looks like you two weren't that hungry?" He smirked as he set the food down on the table.

"Go and get the car," Jaime told him.

Bronn went, and this time he didn't return.

"I'm sorry," Jaime said. "But-"

Brienne laid a finger across his lips. "Everything important will still be here when we get back. Just you and me and…" She looked around. "Is there a bed in here somewhere?"

"Just through there, I would think," Jaime said, nodding towards a door on the far side of the room.

"Then, as I said, everything important will still be here when we get back." She kissed him softly, and then a bit less softly. And then Jaime's hands were on her, pushing up under her top, and in under the waistband of her trousers, while Brienne's hands snaked up under his ridiculous, expensive shirt to the warm skin beneath. Without quite agreeing or even intending it, they toppled together onto the enormous modular lounge.

"You're right, but the bed isn't even that important," Jaime said against her lips. "Just you and me. Everything else can go hang."

Brienne could only agree, or she would have, if Jaime hadn't closed the tiny gap between them and started kissing her again. This was always better, being horizontal together was always better, when their bodies said all that needed saying. It didn't have to happen on a bed.

They were interrupted by the sound of a text message arriving. Jaime dragged his lips from Brienne's with a sigh and pulled out his phone. He rolled his eyes as he read the message, and handed the phone to Brienne so that she could see.

The message was from Bronn: _Stop canoodling and get down here. We haven't got all night._

Brienne grinned, and shook her head, before handing the phone back to Jaime.

"It's just as well he's useful," Jaime muttered, and, taking Brienne's hand, pulled her up off the lounge and led her from the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more chapter to go of this one, I'm almost positive...


	4. Brienne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melisandre measures and assesses and wonders.

The first inkling Brienne had that the seamstress they were going to see was not simply a seamstress came about ten minutes after they'd left the hotel.

The road they'd been driving along met another at an intersection with a brightly lit, grand-looking Victorian hotel—called, appropriately, the Grand Hotel—on their right. The lights changed and Bronn took off at speed, and suddenly they were right by the water, the road hugging the very edge of the coast. The old hotel seemed to have marked the end of the commercial and retail strip, which now gave way to prosperous-looking houses and modern low-rise developments. In the distance, though, right by the water, loomed a small number of huge tower blocks, each several dozen storeys high. As they got closer, Brienne saw that there was a marina right next to the complex. These were not some housing estate, that much was clear. Not positioned where they were, and not when every detail shouted that they’d been designed by the sort of architect that someone like Jaime would probably employ.

And then Bronn signalled and turned right outside, stopping at the main gate only long enough to wave a card at a panel under the watchful eye of a security camera. The red light on the panel turned green and the gate slid open to let their car through. Bronn seemed to know exactly where he was going, because he made straight for what turned out to be a huge underground parking area, like a pigeon pointing itself towards home. Once they'd parked—to Brienne's relief, given Bronn's non-existent relationship with the speed limit—he used his card on the lift from the garage. The lift buttons were marked from one to thirty-three, apart from those for the ground and lower ground floors, and then 'PH'—penthouse. Bronn pressed the button for the thirty-second floor.

The seamstress lived almost at the top.

Brienne really had to wonder if maybe Bronn lived in this tower somewhere as well, as unlikely as it seemed. He just appeared far too familiar with the place for it to be anything other than somewhere he visited frequently.

The doors closed, and the lift took off, smooth and quiet. Brienne glanced over at Jaime, and found him watching her, a small, private smile on his lips. He was remembering the trip up to their room from the restaurant, just like she was. If she'd found herself in this situation with any man—not just Jaime—before this evening, Brienne would almost certainly have blushed scarlet and looked away. But this time she did neither. Instead, she met Jaime's gaze and held it. His smile grew warmer, and his eyes flicked down to the neckline of her top, and- "I'd tell you two to get a room, but you've already got one, not that that’s helping much right now,” Bronn said dryly, looking from Jaime to Brienne and then back at Jaime. “I'd also suggest you not be quite so obvious, but, honestly, that's a lost cause. Just… maybe try to keep your hands off each other at least until Mel's finished getting the measurements she wants? She won't be happy if you get in her way, Lannister." "Then she'll just have to find some way to cope," Jaime said, shrugging, and took Brienne’s hand before smiling at her some more. Bronn gave a disgusted-sounding snort, muttered something about 'Lannisters', and said nothing more.

The lift opened onto a corridor that was similar to those in just about any upscale high rise tower anywhere, except that there were only two doors to be seen leading off this one, numbered '1' and '2'. Jaime rapped on number 1, and a moment later the door opened to reveal a woman of indeterminate age and arresting appearance. She was not especially tall, but she exuded such presence that she gave the impression of height. She stood very straight, her long, dark red hair framing a classically beautiful face with blue eyes and perfectly sculpted eyebrows, skin as pale and smooth as cream, and red lips that matched her long, deep red gown and the ruby that glistened at her throat.

The woman raised her eyebrows at Jaime. "You took your time," she said, the hint of an accent in her voice, though only so small a hint that Brienne could place it no more specifically than "somewhere in northern Europe".

"We came as soon as we could," Jaime said. His arm snaked around Brienne then, pulling her to him and bringing her forward to be introduced simultaneously. "Melisandre, I'd like you to meet Brienne Tarth. Brienne, this is Melisandre."

Brienne stepped forward, hand out-stretched. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms… ?"

"Oh, just Melisandre, my dear." She took Brienne's hand in both of her own and smiled, but there was something about the way she said her name that told Brienne that she had expected Brienne to recognise it. "Please, come in—and that includes you, Bronn, for my sins," she added over her shoulder as she led them in.

Once inside, Brienne realised why there had been only two doors in the corridor outside: the apartment was huge. It must have taken up half the entire floor. The main living area was open plan and, while there were spaces that were clearly designated as kitchen, dining and living areas, it was mostly just one huge space. The outside wall was curved, and consisted almost entirely of floor to ceiling windows and a couple of glass sliding doors, providing what must be, in daylight, stunning views north, east and south over the water. A strong, sweet scent permeated the apartment. After a moment, Brienne identified the source as a small oil burner on the kitchen counter. Above it, a number of large, glass globes in all the colours of the rainbow, which appeared to be floating in mid-air, as if by magic. As she got closer, Brienne realised that the glass balls were suspended from the ceiling on lengths of what might be fishing line. Even so, with each ball positioned directly beneath a recessed downlight, lighting them up from within and dazzling the eye, it was almost impossible to make out that anything attached them to the ceiling.

The great room was decorated in shades of white with touches of grey, and furnished with an eye to both the modern and the minimalist, or at least one half of it was. The other half was a monument to the art of design in fabric and needlework, an Aladdin's cave of fabric and thread, or possibly the lair of a witch with a sideline in haberdashery. A glass-topped artist's drawing table covered in sketches of dresses stood beside the window by the sliding door that led out to the balcony, while bolts of cloth leaned against the glass the rest of the way round to the main door. There were baskets on the floor overflowing with scraps of silk and brocade and lace, smaller baskets containing threads in every colour imaginable scattered across every surface, and tall cabinets of lacquered wood with a multitude of drawers holding who knew what. A long, rectangular table stood in the middle of the room, covered in lengths of a diaphanous deep blue fabric shot with silver. A pair of scissors and a shallow container of pins sat as if in wait at the very end of the table, next to a dressmaker's mannequin on a wheeled stand.

Melisandre led Brienne over towards the windows so that she was standing directly under one of the downlights, and, without a word, started looking her over from top to bottom. Brienne felt as if she were as much on display as the coloured light feature.

"I'm not sure that I-" she began, and was promptly shushed by Melisandre as she slowly circled around Brienne, continuing to look her up and down, leaning in close to inspect a detail here or there. She made three circuits, by the end of which Brienne was feeling supremely uncomfortable.

"Why are you wearing unrelieved black?" Melisandre asked without preamble. "Who died? That is what I always wonder." Brienne could feel the colour leaving her face. "Ah, I see," she said, and Brienne couldn't help feeling that maybe she really did see. "But you didn't die with them. You are still here. You shouldn't wear black on its own. If you must wear black with skin so pale, then you need a strong colour elsewhere to balance it." She touched her own head, and then reached up to hold one of Brienne's earrings against her hand. "These are the right choice. Blue is your colour. Someone got that right at least." She spared a glance for Jaime.

Somehow, that glance was the final straw for Brienne. It was all too much. Just what was going on here? Jaime had said he was getting a dress made for her by a seamstress, but while Melisandre may have been a seamstress once, she was clearly a lot more than that now. Brienne was sure that if she were to google her, she would discover that 'Melisandre' was the name of some sort of exclusive high fashion label.

"Jaime," Brienne said, frowning as she looked over at where the two men stood, watching in some bemusement. "You said it wasn't going to be anything extravagant."

"Actually, _you_ said nothing extravagant, I think," Jaime replied. "I just said nothing _too_ extravagant. And it's really not too extravagant. It's going to be exactly right for the rest of your Christmas present."

"The rest… Jaime, whatever you're getting made, it's too much all by itself. There shouldn't be any 'rest'." Brienne bit her lip.

Jaime stepped closer and, taking her hand, raised it to his lips. "Please let me," he said. "Think of it as a way of making up for some of what's happened today. You didn't sign up for any of that."

He looked so sincere as he said it, voice low and no laughter in his eyes, that Brienne found herself wavering before he'd even finished speaking. This really wasn't such a big deal for him, she reminded herself. He probably did things like this for women he had holiday flings with all the time. Because of course she could hardly be his first holiday fling. Or his second. Not to mention all the non-holiday flings there must have been. All those women pictured with him on the gossip sites… There might exist a certain something between them that would forever make this week a special memory for Brienne, but even that probably wasn't much of a big deal for Jaime.

She should take the gift in the spirit in which it was offered, then.

"All right," she said. "Thank you."

"Thank _you_," Jaime said.

They stared at each other again, a long look of understanding, or something that looked like understanding. Brienne found herself wondering what was truly going on in Jaime's head. They were on the same page here… weren't they?

"If everything is settled," Melisandre said, pushing between them in a way which in anyone else would have been appallingly rude but somehow was simply imperious and queenly in her, "then you two gentlemen have my permission to retire upstairs while Ms Tarth and I do what needs to be done if you truly want this outfit ready by Christmas Day."

"I thought you'd never ask," Bronn said, already turning towards the door.

Jaime didn't follow him. Instead, he sidestepped Melisandre and held out his hand to Brienne. "Give me your phone," he told her.

Brienne did as he asked, not sure why she was surprised when he opened her contacts and added a new one with what was presumably his phone number. When he returned her phone, he handed over his own as well.

"Give me your phone number," he said, "just in case."

"Just in case you're ever more than three feet away from each other without anybody forcing you," Bronn said with a cackle. Jaime turned and gave him a speaking look, which just made Bronn shrug. "It was only an observation. I can't help what I see."

Brienne added her phone number to Jaime's contacts and returned his phone.

"Call me when you're done here," he said. "We'll be right upstairs."

"I will," she said. Jaime stepped closer and kissed her softly in farewell. He'd only done that twice before. Yesterday, when she'd gone to the chemist while he'd headed up the street to get fish and chips for their very late lunch, and last night when he’d left the suite with Bronn, and Brienne had taken the opportunity to contact Margaery. They hadn't been apart for more than a few minutes at any time since they'd met. Bronn hadn't been far wrong about that with his little dig at them.

Brienne wondered if the time would ever come when she wouldn't remember every single kiss she'd shared with Jaime. She doubted it. She would hoard the memories of this week like a miser with a vault full of gold, taking each memory out to gaze upon, to shine and polish, before returning it to its hiding place. Each one would be different from every other. Different and irreplaceable.

With one last look, this one filled with promise, as if he really, _really_ didn't care if Melisandre or Bronn or half the world were to see, Jaime followed Bronn out the front door and was gone.

"What's upstairs?" Brienne asked.

Melisandre tilted her head to one side, her brows creasing ever so slightly. "The Lannisters own the penthouse. I'm surprised Jaime didn't mention it to you."

"That's how you know him?" Brienne asked. "You're neighbours?" So that was why Bronn was so familiar with the building.

"Of a sort, though I see Bronn more often than Jaime, these days." Melisandre went over to one of the cabinets, pulled open one of its many small drawers, and returned with a long dressmaker's tape measure. "Now strip down to your undergarments, please. You can leave your clothes on that chair." She pointed to one of the high-backed chrome and leather chairs that had been transplanted from the dining table and sat incongruously in the midst of the den of creativity.

Brienne did as she was bid, and soon was standing there in nothing but her tank top and cotton knickers. The white marble floor tiles were cool beneath her feet. The rest of her felt quite cool, too, despite the warm night. There was a light breeze coming in through the window off the water, cooling her slightly sweaty skin. She was fast beginning to understand why people who lived in this climate preferred natural fibres and light colours. When even the evenings were this hot, you wanted clothing that would breathe. Perhaps she should look for something like that, a little dressier than the sundresses she'd brought with her, when she went shopping later tonight. God, and she still had no clue what to buy for Jaime's Christmas present. She'd have to-

"That's your usual style of underwear?" Melisandre asked, her tone brisk and businesslike.

"Yes," Brienne said. "I don't usually bother wearing a bra because I'm so…" She gestured in front of her chest. "But I needed something with this top."

Melisandre nodded, as if making a mental note. "Now hold your arm out at right angles from your body. Yes, that's right…"

What followed were fifteen of the most tedious and exacting minutes that Brienne had ever lived through. Melisandre measured _everything_, and from every possible angle, pinned pieces of satin and lace at Brienne's waist to check the fall of the fabric, and noted it all down on the tablet that had suddenly become her constant companion.

"That's everything I need," Melisandre pronounced at last, and Brienne had to try very hard not to heave a sigh of relief. "You can get dressed now."

Brienne got into her clothes in record time, and immediately took out her phone. Jaime answered on the first ring. "Hello, Brienne."

It was just a simple greeting, the most expected thing in the world when someone answered a phone, and yet Brienne felt warmer than she had a moment ago. How could you miss someone after being apart for a quarter of an hour? And yet, she had.

"Hello," she said, feeling absurdly shy. She should have sent him a text. "I'm all done down here."

"Good," he said. "We'll see you in a moment."

"Goodbye, then."

"Goodbye, Brienne."

And then the call was done. Over. Just like that. _Goodbye, Brienne_. He would say those words to her again on Sunday, and then it really would be goodbye. But she wasn't going to dwell on that. She _wasn't_.

Brienne turned back to Melisandre. "Thank you," she said.

Melisandre waved away her thanks. "No need to thank me, my dear. I'm not the one determined to have a bespoke outfit created for you in less than two days."

"But you didn't need to say yes when he asked you. So, thank you."

Melisandre just looked at her, an odd smile on her face. "You really don't know the Lannisters very well, do you?"

"I didn't know any of them existed until… quite recently," Brienne admitted. "But I know Jaime, and that's really all that matters."

"I hope it is," Melisandre said, the smile gone. She looked deadly serious, and… older than Brienne had thought at first, maybe nearer fifty than thirty. "I hope you do know him, because the man who was here tonight is not the Jaime Lannister I thought I knew."

Brienne went still. "What do you mean?"

"The Jaime Lannister I've known for years is a man of sharp edges and cutting little quips. He's rarely completely serious about anything. And yet this man who brought you here to me tonight…" Melisandre stopped, as if considering how to continue. "This _serious_ man who kisses your hand and asks you to _please_ accept his gift? This man who kisses you so softly in farewell, even though you'll be reunited as soon as I've finished taking your measurements? This man who watches you all the time and doesn't make a joke? This man I don't know."

Brienne didn't know what to say. She looked down at her feet. She knew Jaime's less than serious side. She'd seen it at work this morning in the cafe when he'd played his little verbal games with the barista. And she was more than familiar with the small flashes of humour that tended to pepper his conversation. But sharp and cutting? That wasn't Jaime. Maybe there had been a little bit of that right at the beginning, when he'd been so amused at her desperate need for a cup of tea. But there'd still been that warmth of his on display as well, even then, that warmth she'd always associate with Jaime before anything else. Warmth and kindness, when he eventually got her a cup of tea despite its not being on the menu, and then offered her a lift to Byron Bay. And what had happened after that had been warmer still. To put it mildly.

Sharp and cutting? Jaime? _Really_? But Melisandre had known Jaime for years, while Brienne had known him for not quite two days. Surely Melisandre knew who he was far better than Brienne, and yet Brienne was sure that Melisandre had never known Jaime as, as… _intimately_ as Brienne knew him, and not just in the purely physical sense. That must make some difference.

Brienne made herself look up, and found Melisandre waiting if not patiently, at least serenely. "I- I don't know about any of that. It doesn't sound like the man I know." She shrugged.

"That is most patently clear, my dear," Melisandre said. For the first time, there was the slightest hint of warmth in her voice when she addressed Brienne, and not just cool, professional interest or polite concern. "I hope you like my creation when it's done. Perhaps you'll think of a 'Melisandre' if you're in the market for a special gown at some point in the future."

She smiled again, a speculative gleam in her eye that left Brienne feeling quite bewildered. What possible use would she have for any sort of gown in the future, let alone a special one? The gown she'd just been measured for would be the only thing worthy of the name that Brienne was ever likely to own.

But then, Melisandre didn't know that. She didn't know about Brienne's pact with Jaime to spend a week together and nothing more. Maybe she thought that such a sudden commission meant that the recipient was as special to Jaime, as individual, as the dress itself. Was that the point she'd been trying to make when she'd told Brienne that Jaime, Brienne's Jaime, was not the Jaime that Melisandre knew? That he'd shown Brienne a side of himself that most people didn't get to see because she was _special_? It was tempting to believe that, but Brienne knew that if Jaime felt that she was special at all, it was only because their relationship was finite and fleeting. There could be no major repercussions, or anything else, beyond next Sunday.

There was a knock at the door, and Brienne grabbed her bag as Melisandre went over to answer it. It was Bronn. There was no sign of Jaime.

"Come on, Miss Tarth," Bronn said.

"Call me Brienne," Brienne said, not for the first time.

"Better not," Bronn said. "Melisandre," he added, giving her a nod and a sidelong look that seemed to be both greeting and farewell.

"Good night, Bronn," Melisandre said, letting out a little huff of what might have been annoyance. Or laughter.

"Goodbye, Melisandre, and thank you again," Brienne said, holding out her hand.

"Goodbye, my dear, and take care of yourself," Melisandre said, and this time she shook Brienne's hand. Her grip was very firm.

Bronn led Brienne down the corridor to the lift, but instead of taking her back down to the garage, he pressed the button marked 'PH', and up they went. The lift had hardly started moving when it stopped again at the very top floor.

When Brienne exited the lift, Bronn did not follow her. "I'll meet you downstairs when you're ready to leave," he said.

Brienne nodded, and the lift doors closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I failed at keeping this to four chapters. One more and it really will be the end, though!


	5. Brienne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne goes upstairs to see Jaime's <strike>etchings</strike> infinity pool. Things get very wet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Telanu, slipsthrufingers and Nire for beta-ing and handholding beyond the usual call of duty with this chapter.

Brienne turned away from the lift and realised she was in a foyer. There was only one door to choose from here, directly opposite the lift, but before she could knock on it, the door opened, and Jaime was revealed standing in the doorway. Something clicked back into place inside Brienne at the sight of him. She was the one to go to him and kiss him in greeting.

His arm came around her. "Let me show you the apartment I was talking about this afternoon."

"This is it?" Brienne said, and then realised that of course this must be it.

The penthouse apartment was, not surprisingly, larger than Melisandre's. The furnishings were modern, and so tasteful and lacking in character that they could only have been chosen by an expensive interior designer. As in Melisandre's apartment, there were floor to ceiling windows to the north, south, and east of the main living area, beyond which was an outside area more patio than balcony, and beyond that…

The swimming pool stretched out as far as the building went, before the water disappeared over the edge. In daylight, it would look as if the waters merged with those of the ocean, or perhaps with the sky. Now, at night, the subdued below-surface lighting made the waters appear to be a deep violet blue.

"It's an infinity pool?" Brienne asked as they stepped out through the glass sliding door. She'd heard of pools like this, but never seen one.

Jaime nodded. "Do you feel like going in for a dip?"

"It sounds lovely," Brienne said, aware as soon as he suggested a swim of just how uncomfortable and scratchy her synthetic top felt against her very slightly damp skin, "but I didn't bring my swimsuit with me."

"Brienne," Jaime said slowly, taking her by the shoulders and turning her in his arms to face him, "we're alone, and we're at the top of the tallest building between Surfers Paradise and Brisbane. No one is going to see, except for you and me."

"You might have a point," she was forced to admit.

"So?" said Jaime.

"So…"

"I'll give you a moment, if you like."

"If you want to." Brienne started unbuttoning her top.

With a grin, Jaime said, "I'll be back," and disappeared inside.

Brienne left her clothes in a pile by the door and walked barefoot across the balcony-patio, not sure why she felt self-conscious. Jaime wasn't even looking, though he must know that she would be undressed by now. She hadn't been self-conscious all the other times they'd been naked together. Not since the very beginning, and even then…

She dived into the water, cutting the surface cleanly and taking care to stay shallow, since the pool was bound not to be terribly deep. The water was something close to the perfect temperature; certainly nothing like the shocking cold of the first seconds after diving into the waters near the Isle of Tarth at most times of the year. She surfaced on the far side of the pool, closest to the sea. Standing, Brienne looked out over the edge and into the night. From here, she could make out a low, dark shape rising above the water a short distance out and stretching off to both the north and south: one of the sand islands that dotted this part of the coast. Beyond it was the open sea.

Right at that moment, looking down into the near blackness, Brienne had the disconcerting feeling that she might be the only person in the world. Except of course she wasn't, because there were no doubt dozens of people just in this building, some of them probably right below her feet. And now that she looked more carefully, she could see lights here and there on the island. There must be at least a few inhabitants. Maybe they were standing in their front doorways looking back at the huge, brightly lit tower—looking back at her.

Somehow, that was even more disconcerting. A shiver seized Brienne and, suddenly cold, she turned away from what lay outside and slid back down into the water so that only her head and shoulders remained above the surface. Holding onto the railing that ran the length of the pool, just above the tiny wavelets that slapped against the side, she leaned back and kicked her feet out in front of her under the water.

She looked around. The pool was empty, apart from some sort of large inflatable thing floating down at the far end, and a couple of smaller things of a similar shape bobbing in the water nearby like satellites. Brienne let herself half-swim, half-drift down towards the objects so that she could get a better look. As she drew closer, it became clear that the things, or at least the large thing, was a sort of inflatable pool chair, but in the shape of a large, golden lion with a stupid grin painted on its face. The smaller floaties, or whatever they were, were also lion-shaped. What were they for? Some especially spoilt cat? It didn't seem like a good idea, given that in Brienne's experience cats had a tendency to hang onto things with their claws, but the smaller lions certainly wouldn't fit a full-sized human, or even a child.

She left the lions to their own devices, and turned over onto her back, floating lazily for a while as she stared up at the stars. The constellations weren't the familiar ones that she was used to, or at least they weren't where they should be. The Southern Cross was the one to look for in the southern sky, wasn't it? If only she knew _where_ to look for it. There were just so many stars that were strangers to her. Maybe Jaime could help her look for the Southern Cross when he came back.

Brienne bumped against the side of the pool, and grabbed hold of the railing. She was almost back where she started, close by the far side of the pool, with nothing between her and the sky. Jaime still hadn't returned. Where was he? And, before she could stop it, fast on the heels of that thought came its companion: who was he?

She had felt so sure that she knew Jaime, despite their brief acquaintance, but Melisandre had made it clear that the man Brienne had spent most of the past two days with was… what? A fabrication? No. Brienne knew that the side of himself that Jaime had shared with her was real. She could feel the truth of it deep in her gut. But that didn't mean he'd shown her all of him.

She thought of him as warm and kind and funny, but he wasn't as warm or kind or funny with other people as he was with her. Brienne only had to think back to the confrontation with the photographer this morning, the way Jaime had bristled with aggression and barely suppressed violence, and yesterday on the beach, when he'd knocked Hyle flat.

Would she see more of that side of him? Probably not, unless the paps got particularly intrusive. In only six days from now she'd be on the plane on her way back to her own reality.

The door slid open and Jaime stepped out onto the balcony, naked as the day he was born. From a purely aesthetic point of view, he really was a picture of male beauty, with his broad shoulders, long legs and perfect proportions. He reminded her a little of an idealised Ancient Greek statue—except in one respect. He was far too well-endowed to fit the ancient world's idea of _civilised_ male beauty. Jaime was a Greek god with a barbarian's cock. No self-respecting deity would have allowed himself to have been depicted like that—or, for that matter, depicted carrying two cocktail glasses with little umbrellas in them.

He stopped by the pool, set down the two glasses—which contained some sort of very red drink—on the tiles right by the edge, and then dived straight in, much as Brienne had done. She watched as he came swiftly towards her, skimming along the bottom of the pool like a Jaime-shaped torpedo. He surfaced right in front of her, a few drops of water landing on her face as he pushed his dripping hair back out of his eyes. Brienne ducked down under the water for a moment, before surfacing and pushing her own hair back—and somehow showering Jaime's face in droplets in the process.

They exchanged a look, and burst out laughing.

It was nervous laughter, at least on Brienne's side, and after a moment it died as suddenly as it had been born, and all that was left was just the two of them, staring at each other in the warm, silent evening, as the light reflecting off the water gave their faces an eerie, blue-tinged glow.

Even like this, Jaime Lannister looked far more beautiful than any non-Hemsworth—or even any Hemsworth, now that she'd seen one in the flesh—had any right to be, with his slicked back hair and his glistening wet, slightly blue skin. He looked eminently kissable. Brienne let her feet touch the bottom of the pool, ready to put thought into action, but then Jaime was reaching for her and kissing her and it was just as well that her feet were on the ground because otherwise she might have gone right under, or just floated away, and right now she couldn't bring herself to care as long as he was there with her.

He drew back, breaking the kiss, and suddenly he _wasn't_ there with her. Brienne opened her eyes. Jaime was still standing so close that they were almost touching. _Almost_. And she was bereft. Lost. Longing.

What was wrong with her? It was just a kiss and he was just a man, even if her body liked him, and his kisses, far, far better than it had ever liked any others.

Her breath caught in the back of her throat, which was at least better than actually whimpering, and she made herself take a step back, so that she was against the side of the pool, the metal railing hard against her bare back.

"Let me get you a daiquiri," Jaime said.

Brienne nodded, not trusting herself to speak, relieved when he pushed up off his feet—incidentally giving her an unrivalled view of his firmly-muscled arse for a fleeting moment—and swam the half a dozen strokes back to the other side of the pool.

Yes, this was better. Not touching. Him over there and her over here. Getting used to not touching almost every single second they were together, so that when the moment came that she had to touch him for the very last time, she would be able to let go without it hurting quite so very much. She would be able to let go without feeling as if she might have torn herself in two.

Jaime walked back slowly, the water at chest height, with a glass in each hand. When he reached her, he handed one of the glasses to Brienne. It was festooned with a small, hot pink cocktail umbrella that clashed horribly with the bright red drink. A large strawberry spliced on the side of the glass provided a pointer to its probable contents.

"Where did you find these?" she asked. Maybe someone—some servant—had made them earlier and left them in the freezer or something. It seemed like the sort of thing that might happen in an apartment that came with its own infinity pool.

"I didn't find them," Jaime said, "I _made_ them." Brienne's surprise must have shown a little too obviously on her face, because he continued, the corner of his mouth curling up into a wry little smile, "Even I can manage to make a strawberry daiquiri on my own. I was a barista when you met me, remember."

"For half a day," Brienne pointed out. "How many coffees did you make, exactly, before I turned up begging for tea?"

"Not many," Jaime hedged, which Brienne had no trouble translating as 'none'. "But the point I'm making here is still valid. I'm not just a pretty face."

And there was her opening. There was a chance to not just think the question but to ask it: who are you? But Brienne had apparently become a coward sometime between getting out of Hyle's hire car yesterday and now, because she didn't take that chance. Instead, she lifted the glass and took a long sip through the gold-coloured—or possibly actual gold—metal straw. The drink was sweet and very cold, she registered, before the burn of alcohol on her throat almost left her choking.

"God," she said. "What's in this? Rocket fuel?"

"No," Jaime said. "White rum, lots of strawberries, lots of strawberry liqueur, lots of ice, a dash of lemon juice, and lots more white rum." He ticked the ingredients off on his fingers. "I can take it back inside and add some more ice if you like," he offered, holding out his free hand to take the drink from her.

Brienne held the glass tight against her chest. "No, that will be quite all right," she said. "I'll manage." By the time she got to the bottom of the glass, she would probably no longer care about what was in it—or about much else.

Jaime grinned, leaned back against the side of the pool beside Brienne, and sipped his own daiquiri. Beneath the water, his foot brushed against her leg.

"Are you planning to do that every time you have the opportunity, even when there's no table in sight?" Brienne asked, looking down, where his leg, shadowy and slightly distorted-looking beneath the water, was bent towards hers.

"Are you complaining?" Jaime took another sip of his drink, looking over the rim of the glass at her in a way that was somehow almost insolent and yet inviting.

"No, not complaining, but it might become a trifle inconvenient if you keep doing it regardless of where we are."

"I'll just have to keep you to myself then," Jaime said, his voice going lower, though maybe that was just the effect of the drink. But then, with a single blink, that invitation in his eyes turned into a promise.

Brienne couldn't look away, though part of her desperately wanted to.

Keeping his eyes on her, Jaime reached out and took hold of one of the smaller plastic lion floaties that was slowly drifting past, and set his glass down in it. Oh! It was a floating drinks holder. She registered a little pang of disappointment that it didn't belong to some hugely fluffy, extremely pampered Lannister feline after all. But then Jaime was holding out his hand to her, and she gave him her glass without a word. He wrapped his free hand around the other small lion floatie, pulling it closer, and deposited Brienne's drink in it.

"Why do you have those?" Brienne couldn't help but ask, nodding at the floating plastic lions.

"They're useful." Jaime shrugged.

"Yes, but why those ones? They're so, well, cheap and tacky."

"They were a gift from Tyrion.” He huffed out a breath. “Shae's not the only one who likes to make little digs about me being the 'lion of Lannistercorp'. That’s what the press dubbed me years ago, when I used to wear my hair longer, and I’ve never managed to shake it.”

"Oh," Brienne said, wishing with every fibre of her being that she hadn't said anything. She didn't want to bring the press into their evening together, even in the most indirect of ways.

"Don't worry," Jaime said with a sudden grin. "I named the two smaller ones 'Tyrion', since they're small Lannister lions that can hold a surprising amount of alcohol."

Brienne grinned back, a bit uncertainly, not sure if she'd broken the mood or not.

"It was a joke that worked better in Tyrion's pre-Shae days," Jaime said, giving both drink holders a gentle push and sending them sailing away towards the huge plastic lion at the far end of the pool. "But I really don't give a damn about them or Shae or even Tyrion right now," he added, turning back to her. "Just you." He stepped closer, his eyes intent on her face.

Brienne tried and failed to remember what they'd just been talking about.

They came together without another word, Jaime's hand going unerringly for her breast, while Brienne's cupped the side of his face, all slippery and wet—beware, slippery when wet, she thought a bit hysterically—before her fingers slid up into his wet hair. He pushed her up against the side of the pool, and pushed himself up against her, hip to hip and chest to breast and, almost, mouth to mouth. She could feel his cock, fully hard and pushing up against her belly, and then his lips were against hers, not just mouth to mouth but tongue to tongue.

Brienne moaned. She suddenly—or not so suddenly—wanted him desperately. She'd been on edge ever since they'd left their dinner half-eaten and kissed their way upstairs in the lift before stumbling into their room at the hotel, desperate to feel skin on skin _everywhere_, and instead been confronted by the sight of Bronn waiting for them.

She squirmed against Jaime now, feeling oddly empty, feeling as if she needed to be _filled_, as he pressed close to her entrance, to her _cunt_. She'd never said the word before. It felt daring even to think it. Language like that had always been 'not for her'. Margaery might—and did—use it. Anyone else Brienne's age probably said whatever they liked. But Brienne had always been… Brienne, and she'd always known deep in her heart that just about everything that everyone else took for granted as a simple right of being young and female was something she was not allowed, or could not allow herself.

But now here she was, in a situation where everything was so far beyond what she was used to thinking of as 'for her' that it seemed silly to believe that any of the usual rules still applied.

For now.

"I didn't think to bring condoms from the hotel," Jaime said against her mouth, sounding regretful. "Did you?"

"No, I…" Brienne's words got lost in a soft gasp. "I don't care about condoms, if you don't," she said. "I've got an IUD. You're… you're clean, aren't you?" Not a question that she was used to asking, along with all the rest, but… here she was, and here _they_ were.

"I was clean the last time I got myself tested. That was over a year ago," Jaime said. "Since then there's been no one."

"No one at all?" she asked, surprised.

"No one but you," he said, cupping the side of her face in one hand. "Only you."

_Only you_. Brienne closed her eyes, already knowing that this would be one of those little flashes of memory that would never leave her.

"I haven't had anyone, either. Not since Hyle. And that was…"—_a mistake_—"last year." She opened her eyes again as he resumed their kiss, kissing him back for a moment before she said, "No one since then. Only you."

His eyes darkened, or maybe it was just the way he turned a little away from the light right then, and took her with him.

They'd learned each other in the times they'd made love over the past couple of days, learned to read each other in the language of soft gasps and little nudges and sudden, intense kisses, so right now no more words were needed to communicate what to do and where to go and how to _be_. Jaime slid down into the water, hands gripping Brienne's hips, positioning himself, and then he was moving, shoulders rising up out of the water, as beneath it he pushed up and into her, sliding easily because she was already so, so wet inside as well as out, and so very ready for him. She'd been ready for half the evening; right now it felt more like half her life.

It felt different without the condom. More intimate, literally nothing between them. She clenched her muscles around him, and couldn't help a tiny smile of triumph as he groaned.

She wrapped her legs around him, clasped his shoulders, warm and slippery beneath her fingers, as he pulled out of her a little way, and then her head was falling back, all of her was falling back into the water, but not really falling very far, as he thrust up, hard and sure and everything she wanted. She felt as light as a feather, as small and delicate and _feminine_ as she could ever have wished to be, even while she was anchored by her strong legs, and Jaime gripped her hard, held her as close as it was possible for two people to be, safe against him.

And then his hands were moving up along her sides, pulling her back to him, pulling her properly into his arms, holding her there, keeping them both steady as he grabbed the railing with one hand and thrust into her again and again and again, murmuring words she couldn't quite make out against her neck. He turned then, and pushed her back against the railing, one hand going to her breast, rolling the nipple, while the other slid down between them, finding the place she most wanted his touch. He pushed up into her as his thumb pressed down, and he looked right into her eyes.

"So hot," he said. "So, so hot." And then he was kissing her neck, the warm wet press of his lips, the scrape of his teeth on her skin creating an extra point of pleasure, and sensation streaked through her like a bolt of lightning, neck and clit and cunt lighting up with almost unbearable awareness, and Brienne was _gone_. She convulsed, every muscle clenching, her whole body trembling as her breath caught again and again, ugly, desperate grunts turning into a long, helpless keening so loud that it hurt her throat.

When at last it was over, Brienne slid slowly backwards into the water and up against the side of the pool, still joined, still _filled_, a thousand words spinning slowly in her mind. A thousand words, but only one that was in any way coherent. Jaime. Jaime, Jaime, Jaime.

She felt his hand on her face, and in her wet hair, stroking.

"Brienne." Two words. Jaime. Brienne. He and she. Him and her. They. Them. Together.

Brienne opened her eyes, and her arms, and Jaime came to her, clutching her tight when she started moving with him, riding him, as the water swirled about them and the stars stared down, and they reached for each other, seeking and finding, beneath the night sky.

She felt him jerking inside her as he spent himself, closer and more personal than he'd ever been before, as she muffled his groans with her kisses. He stayed there with her, breathing hard into her shoulder, for a long time. Or a short time. A timeless time.

He left her, at last, when his cock slipped from her, and he shivered.

"Are you all right?" She stroked his arm, the side of his face and down along his stubbled jaw, not caring which part of him her fingers found so long as she could feel him, reassure herself that he was really there, well and whole and hers.

"You're so hot," he said, echoing his own words from before, but this time he grinned a bit wryly. "The water isn't as hot as you are."

"Oh," she said, and then, "_Oh!_" as she realised.

"I think I've had enough of the pool for tonight—if you have."

"Yes," Brienne said, but she could just as easily have said, 'where you go, I go'. That was going to be a problem if it continued beyond tonight. She'd just have to make sure that it didn't. Tomorrow, she would be strong again.

Jaime smiled, an easy, relaxed smile. "Then why don't we take our drinks inside and rinse off. I'll get Bronn to go back to the hotel and retrieve the remains of our dinner and our other things, and we can stay here until it's time for the big shopping trip."

"Not all that big," Brienne said. She only had a few things that she needed to get—if she could work out what they were.

"Big enough," said Jaime, in a way that made Brienne think that they weren't talking about the shopping trip any more.

"Okay," she said, demurely, or trying to be demure. All right, she was failing at being demure. She swallowed a laugh as Jaime kissed the grin off her face. "I'm going inside," she told him, feet against the side of the pool as she pushed herself off into the water. She found the stairs hidden in the shadows down at the far end of the pool, and mounted them slowly, feeling heavier with each step she took as she left the water behind her and returned to something closer to reality.

She waited at the top step as Jaime swam over to the floating lions to retrieve their drinks, and then followed her up and out of the water.

Where he went, she went, but the opposite was also true.

For tonight, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this STILL isn't the end. However, there is a limited number of things they can do at this point, and shopping is one of them, so that will FINALLY be happening in the next, and DEFINITELY final, chapter.
> 
> Also, Nire did this AMAZING illustration for this scene. Praise her!
> 
>   

> 
> **ETA:** Sorry about the formatting glitch partway through! All fixed now! *facepalm* 


	6. Brienne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne and Jaime finally, FINALLY go shopping in the middle of the night (which was the original premise for this entire story, and just took about 20,000 more words to get there than it should have.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU to slipsthrufingers for the beta, and Nire for cheerleading.

The shower turned out to be outrageously huge, not just big enough for both of them, but big enough for half a football team, should anyone feel so inclined. Brienne and Jaime spent a long time rinsing each other off very thoroughly. So thoroughly, in fact, that Brienne eventually had to bite down quite hard on Jaime's shoulder to muffle her cries so that the downstairs neighbours wouldn't have to know what was going on up here. Though, as Jaime helpfully pointed out as he continued to lather her breasts, if the neighbours had happened to be out on their balcony earlier, they'd be in no doubt already.

If they'd been at home on the farm, there would have been a cake of soap handy that Brienne would have gladly thrown at him—though of course if they'd been at home on the farm, there would have barely been enough space for the two of them to be in the bathroom at the same time, never mind taking a shower together. She contented herself with grabbing a bottle of shower gel and pointing it at him like a pistol. Jaime raised his hands in surrender, but she fired anyway.

He smelled very jasmine-y afterwards.

They'd made it as far as getting out of the shower and into a pair of long, white matching bathrobes when Bronn arrived at the door, bringing their overnight bags, the plastic bag containing the remains of their dinner—which was starting to feel like quite some time ago now—and an insulated bag for keeping things cold.

He put the contents of the cold bag—a couple of small plastic takeaway containers—in the fridge, and gave Brienne a quick sidelong glance as he handed over the rest of the food. She remembered then that she'd been wearing a very similar bathrobe the first time she'd met Bronn. Could it really only have been last night?

Bronn sniffed the air a couple of times, before he glanced, eyes narrowed, at Jaime—who didn't turn a hair. Once he realised no explanation was going to be forthcoming about the strong hint of jasmine in the air, Bronn told them, "Some of those freelance photographers were starting to gather outside the hotel when I left. I think you'll be right for the evening. They all think you're still inside the hotel."

Brienne let out a long sigh of relief. Maybe this whole evening would turn out all right after all.

"I'll phone you at half one," Bronn told Jaime, as he went to the front door to let himself out. "And if you need me in the meantime, then you know where to find me."

And with that, he was gone again.

"What did he mean by that last bit?" Brienne asked. "Is he planning on going to a pub or something? I don't think that's such a good idea, if he's going to be driving us around."

Jaime shook his head. "No, he'll be downstairs. Not right downstairs, in the garage or waiting around in the lobby or something. He'll be at Melisandre's. At least, that's my best guess."

Brienne's eyes grew round. "Do they have a… a _thing_?" she asked. She found it extremely hard to picture the rough and ready Bronn and the elegant, queenly Melisandre together in any sense of the word. And yet, there could be no doubt that they knew each other, and possibly quite well. That was certainly the impression that Brienne had received from their mostly unspoken interaction in Melisandre's apartment earlier.

"I'm… not sure," Jaime said. "I make a point of not enquiring too closely." He made an exaggerated grimace. "But yes, a… 'thing' might be the best word to use in this case."

They reheated the food in the microwave. Probably the chef at Koko's would have been horrified if he had known that his exquisitely prepared 'bug' was receiving such disrespectful treatment. Well, Brienne wasn't planning on letting him know.

They ate at the kitchen island and, while the food had undoubtedly looked better when presented with such care on the elegant turquoise-coloured dishes in the restaurant, Brienne was fairly sure that she'd never eaten anything so delicious. Of course, some of that was down to the fact that it was now mid-evening at the end of a long day, and she was _starving_. But possibly part of that feeling was because of the company as well.

As they reached the end of the meal, Brienne felt Jaime's bare foot find her leg. She was surprised it had taken him so long. He must have been hungry, too. Well, hungry for food as well as…

She looked down at her plate, knowing that she was colouring up a little. Why was thinking about… all that, more embarrassing than actually doing it? Maybe just because now she had time to think about it. When she was in the middle of it all, she was too busy just _being_.

Brienne made herself look up and found Jaime watching her. Again. His foot was moving down along her shin to her instep now. She glanced around, looking anywhere but at him, and her eyes lighted on the refrigerator. What had Bronn put in there?

Slipping down off her stool, and trying to act as if she hadn't noticed that there was a foot caressing her leg, Brienne went over to the refrigerator. She brought the plastic takeaway containers back to the kitchen island, and opened them with genuine curiosity. One contained some slightly melted ice cream that had a little too much colour to it to be vanilla, plus it had some little bits of what looked like fruit and nuts in it. The other contained two deep red panna cottas. She bent her head and sniffed. The panna cottas had a familiar aroma.

She glanced up quickly at Jaime, only remembering after she'd done it that she was trying not to look at him.

"Beetroot panna cotta?" she asked incredulously.

"I saw it on the menu. Along with the macadamia and fig ice cream. They both seemed fitting, somehow."

He grinned at her, and Brienne bit down on a smile, remembering every single moment of their day, both good and bad, and realised that this was why she hadn't wanted to look at him. It wasn't that she was embarrassed, or not really. It was just that once she started looking at Jaime she found it almost impossible to stop.

He yawned as she continued to watch him, as he covered his mouth ostentatiously. "We could have dessert in bed. If you want," he said, eyes running over her lazily, lingering at her breasts—though why on earth he should find her meagre offerings in that department at all interesting Brienne really didn't know, except that apparently he did—and coming back to meet her eyes, the question still in his.

"We could, but _you're_ eating those panna cottas. I'll have the ice cream," Brienne said, grabbing the container with the ice cream in it before he could try to dispute her claim to it.

He stood up. "Or we could just put the food back in the refrigerator and have _dessert_," he said. The look in his eyes was no longer a question. Now it was a promise.

Brienne forgot how to breathe.

They should have got this out of their systems by now. Apart from just now in the pool, there'd been this afternoon and this morning, and last night and yesterday afternoon before that. And yet…

Brienne had never been this keen about sex before. She'd never met anyone who was this keen about having sex with her, either. Or even really all that keen to have sex with her so much as once, let alone… however many times it had been. She'd lost count.

This was her holiday fling. The usual rules didn't apply, she reminded herself.

The panna cottas were in the refrigerator, and the ice cream in the freezer, before Brienne got around to saying another word.

~*~

They woke and made love yet again somewhere around midnight. It was slow and sleepy, a world away from the desperation to have Jaime, to have him as close as it was possible for two human beings to be, that Brienne had felt when they were in the pool, and yet just as deeply fulfilling in its own way.

Afterwards, she flopped back down onto the bed, her face mashed against one of the many, many pillows, already half asleep.

So she must have been dreaming when she thought she heard Jaime say, "Don't go. Don't leave me."

It was the sort of ridiculous thing that belonged in a dream, because Brienne was right there.

"'m here," she murmured—because she _was_—as he gathered her to him.

She felt a brush of lips against her forehead, and then she might have heard a muttered, "_Keep_ being here."

But that must have been part of the dream, too.

~*~

Bronn's call woke them, an hour later than they'd intended.

Brienne was in the midst of a confused but somehow exhilarating dream when the ringing of Jaime's phone intruded. She opened her eyes, the details of the dream already fading and beyond her grasp. She groaned, and closed her eyes again, but didn't roll away as Jaime answered the call. Her face was tucked in close against his shoulder, and she breathed in the warm, sleepy smell of him. It was… nice. Too nice to get up and leave when it was still hours until dawn.

"You're late," Jaime was saying into the phone. There was a pause, and then he said, "All right, all right. It should be fine. We'll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes." He paused again, and Brienne felt him shift against her before two fingers were pressing gently under her chin. She lifted her face to his and let him kiss her hello. "Better make that twenty," Jaime said into the phone.

Bronn was still speaking—though Brienne couldn't make out the words and was pretty sure she didn't want to—when Jaime ended the call and dropped his phone on the covers. He didn't waste any time in resuming their kiss. It was a long, slow kiss, the best way to wake up that Brienne had ever experienced. She wished she could have that every morning. It would be a great improvement on the alarm on her phone.

"We'd better get up," Jaime said regretfully, his lips a whisper away from hers.

"Did Bronn oversleep?" Brienne asked. _And whose bed was he oversleeping in?_ her mind wondered before she could stop it.

"He claims not. He reminded me that it's an hour earlier because we've crossed over the state border into Queensland, and they don't have daylight saving here."

"Oh, yes," Brienne said. She still hadn't adjusted the time on her phone after she'd crossed over that border travelling south on Sunday morning.

"So it's only half past one right now, Queensland time," Jaime said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

He turned on the bedside lamp and Brienne buried her head in his pillow. She felt the mattress shift as he stood up, and she wrapped her arms around the pillow. It smelled a little like him, though it really didn't feel much like him at all. If she wanted to feel the real thing, she'd have to get up, which she would do in just a moment. She'd get up in just a...

"Brienne." It was Jaime's voice, and… was that his hand on her shoulder? Brienne opened her eyes. The lamp was still on. She blinked a few times, and rolled over.

Jaime was standing beside the bed, wearing jeans and a t-shirt and holding… "I brought you a cup of tea," he said.

Approximately two seconds later, Brienne was sitting up in bed. "Thank you," she breathed, taking the tea from him without _quite_ snatching it—she didn't want to risk spilling it—and taking a grateful sip. That first mouthful was always the best. "You remembered how I like it," she said.

"Strong and with a dash of milk," Jaime said, watching her in some amusement.

Brienne looked up at him. Was he real? A gorgeous man, one she wanted and who, amazingly, seemed to want her just as much, who liked to spend time with her and be seen with her in public, _and_ who brought her a cup of tea, made exactly the way she liked it, in bed? He couldn't be real. Or, if he was, there had to be a catch.

She wondered when the other shoe would drop.

Oh. Yes. Next Sunday. She'd get on the plane home, and then this wouldn't be real any more. It was easy to be a different version of yourself if you only had to keep it up for a week. She wasn't sure if it was Jaime or herself that that might apply to most.

"Have your tea and then we should get going," Jaime told her. "I'll be in the kitchen."

"All right," Brienne said. "I won't be long."

He turned to leave the room. She almost, _almost_, called out for him to stay. But she didn't. If he stayed, they'd probably get distracted. Again. And she couldn't afford to do that. Not when she still didn't know what on earth she should get him for Christmas.

~*~

The drive to the shopping mall wasn't a long one. Once again, Bronn did the driving, and once again Brienne sat with Jaime in the back. This time, though, Brienne didn't even attempt to pretend that they spent the journey sitting sedately apart. She rested her head on Jaime's shoulder most of the way, because it was right there, convenient and just the right height, and this week, if she wanted to do something like that, she could. She turned her head once or twice, to accept the occasional kiss that Jaime dropped on her lips, but mostly the two of them travelled in companionable silence.

Bronn was less silent, trying leading questions like had she ever been to Queensland before—she had, just two days ago—and had she ever been shopping at this hour before—she hadn't, but no doubt one could, in London. Bronn agreed about that, and asked her where in London she was from. Once they'd exhausted that line of conversation, he asked her what she thought of Jaime's infinity pool.

Fortunately, they turned into the shopping mall's car park right then, and Jaime broke into the conversation to tell Bronn which level to park on. Brienne could feel his shoulder moving against her head. She looked up and found him biting down on a smile, which no doubt meant that he was holding in his laughter with some effort.

She tried to stare at him sternly, and wondered if maybe some more cheap and tacky pool floats might be in his near future.

Still, she was relieved when they parted ways with Bronn at the bottom of the escalator. "I know a cafe in here," he said. "Tyrion doesn't approve of it."

"So of course you go there every chance you get," Jaime said.

Bronn winked. "Let me know when you're ready to leave." And with a nod, off he went.

Brienne and Jaime went in the opposite direction.

"What first?" Jaime asked.

"You were going to help me choose a bottle of wine for Tyrion. Something interesting but not wildly expensive," Brienne reminded him.

"So I was," Jaime said. "There's a bottle shop just along here that should have the sort of thing you want."

She took his arm and they strolled along. It was nice, just doing something so incredibly ordinary together. It wasn't domestic, exactly. Not quite. But it was… nice.

It was also a good time of day to be shopping if you wanted to avoid the hordes this close to Christmas. Even though it was now less than twenty-four hours until the big day, there weren't very many people taking advantage of the shops being open at this hour. Probably, there had been more shoppers around an hour or two ago, and most likely their numbers would increase again in another hour or two, but right now it was almost as if they had this floor of the huge shopping centre to themselves.

They were not the only customers in the so-called bottle shop—which turned out to simply be an off-licence—but no one else paid them any attention, being too busy filling their trolleys with bottles of sparkling and non-sparkling wine, bottles of spirits and bottles of brightly-coloured liquid that looked like soft drinks but probably had a high alcohol content, and long flat cases of beer, which Jaime insisted on calling slabs.

The shop had an extensive wine section. There was a long, glass-fronted cabinet along one wall, in which were kept wines with prices in the hundreds of dollars. Jaime led her past these to an open area with row upon row of reds and whites neatly laid out with short descriptive labels attached to the front edge of the shelf.

With Jaime's help, Brienne chose a bottle of shiraz that was priced at just over thirty dollars. This was somewhat more than Brienne usually spent when she occasionally splashed out on a bottle of wine to drink with friends over dinner. But surely it had to be so cheap as to be below the notice of someone like Tyrion, though.

Jaime shook his head when Brienne voiced her misgivings. "No. Tyrion says that in another decade this maker's wines will be going for five times this price. He loves getting in early. This will be fine."

So Brienne bought the bottle of shiraz, and mentally crossed one name off her Christmas list.

Next, was to find something for Shae—something a bit like the scarf she'd seen in the macadamia gift shop this afternoon, only a bit more interesting and arty.

They continued on to the end of that level of the mall, and took the escalator down. The level below was a little less deserted than the one they'd just come from, but the other shoppers hurried past and seemed to take no interest in either Jaime or Brienne. This level of the mall, or at least this part of it, was populated by men's clothing stores, specialty shoe shops, general shoe shops, shops filled with children's wear and… women's clothing shops.

Brienne usually ignored these, and bought her jeans and shirts and tops from the menswear section of large department stores—where she could depend upon finding jeans that were a good fit for her very long legs and relatively narrow hips— but since she'd been in Australia she'd taken to wearing light, loose sundresses. This was mainly out of necessity, as she'd nearly passed out from overheating when she'd first arrived and attempted to walk around in the sun in her usual jeans, long-sleeved tops and boots. She'd picked up four sundresses in a very basic sort of cut at an outdoor market the day after she'd almost fainted from the heat, and had been wearing them pretty much constantly ever since.

Now, she stopped outside one of the women's clothing shops, and stared at a dress in the window. It was made from a plain fabric in an indeterminate shade somewhere between blue and green, but tending more towards the blue side of things. It was sleeveless, but the simple, round neck was quite high, and the fabric itself was light and loose, gathered at the top, and cinched at the waist with a wide belt in a pale caramel colour. It looked simple and elegant.

"You should try it on," Jaime said. "The colour would suit you."

"Oh, no, I-" Brienne began automatically, and stopped herself. Hadn't she been thinking just earlier this evening that she should get something a little dressier than the sundresses she'd been wearing, and in a natural fibre? It would be just her luck if this dress turned out to be a hundred per cent polyester or something, but she would never know for sure unless she went into the shop and had a proper look. She took a deep breath. "Yes, I think I will try it on," she said.

She'd half-expected that Jaime would wait for her outside, but he came into the shop with her. A sales assistant came hurrying over—they were the only customers—and was only too pleased to direct Brienne to the rack where the blue-green dress was to be found in various sizes. The fabric was a cotton-polyester blend, but more cotton than polyester. It might just do, assuming that it fitted her at all.

She tried on the largest size available—a size L, whatever that meant—and, wonder of wonders, it wasn't too tight across the shoulders, nor impossibly baggy in the chest area. She buckled the belt and looked herself over in the fitting room mirror. The dress… didn't look too bad. The colour did suit her, just as Jaime had said, making her eyes look even bluer than usual, and toning down the colour in her shoulders left over from the sunburn. The fabric fell in soft lines from the waist, ready to swish gently as she walked. The hem was a little higher than she'd ideally have liked, but then, with her legs, hems were always higher than she liked—and sometimes a lot higher. That was one of the main reasons why she usually avoided dresses like the plague. That, and that anything too girly just made her look ludicrous, like a joke in human form.

She stepped out of the fitting room, feeling stupidly nervous. It was probably all wrong. What did she know about dresses? Maybe it really _was_ too tight across the shoulders. She should change back into her other dress, she should-

Jaime's slow smile stopped her in her tracks. His eyes swept her from head to toe and back again, and his smile widened. Brienne smiled back, a bit hesitantly. She couldn't look too terrible in the dress, if it made Jaime smile to see her in it. She should have trusted her instincts on it, and not tried to second-guess herself.

"We'll take it," Jaime told the sales assistant.

Brienne blinked, and stood up very straight. The high-handedness of that statement was breathtaking. And yes, given Jaime's background, it probably wasn't surprising that he just said things like that without stopping to think about it. But still… "_I'll_ take it," she told the shop assistant.

"Let me buy it for you," Jaime offered, as he was almost bound to do.

"No, thank you," Brienne said. "You're already getting me the other dress. And… there's everything else, as well. I'll buy this." She was proud of the way she held her head up high, and how steady her voice was.

"Of course," Jaime said, but Brienne could see the puzzlement in his eyes, and a tiny suggestion of hurt.

She came over and kissed his cheek. "Thank you for the offer," she said, as gently as she knew how. "But I need to do some things for myself." She didn't want to end up feeling _kept_, like a pet or… something else, even though Jaime would never mean it that way.

Jaime's expression was still a little troubled, but he kissed her lightly on the lips. "Of course," he said again, even though there was something about the way he said it that told Brienne that he didn't truly understand.

She kissed him again. A little deeper, a little more seriously. "_Thank you_ for the offer," she said. "I appreciate everything you do for me, or want to do for me, even if I can't accept absolutely all of it."

Jaime smiled then, a little rueful, but warm, the way Jaime's smiles always should be. "I think you're the only person who's said anything like that to me. No one else has ever seemed to feel that anything I offered, or had to offer, was too much. It was just… expected." He shrugged, as if it didn't matter—or maybe trying to pretend that it didn't.

It was Brienne's turn to hurt, but not for herself. Had no one ever appreciated what a prize Jaime was? Or were the good looks, and, especially, the money, the only things that most people ever noticed? She wondered about all of those women he'd been pictured with in the gossip rags even more than she had before, but for quite different reasons now.

Maybe, in some ways, Jaime was almost as alone as she was.

Brienne took his hand and squeezed it. "I'll be back in a moment."

She changed quickly, and came over to the counter to pay for the dress while Jaime waited for her near the entrance.

"Good choice. That's a nice dress," the sales assistant said as she ran the barcode reader over the price tag and it made a quiet beep. "That'll be $129.95."

Brienne handed over her credit card and then keyed her PIN into the card machine.

"Thank you," the sales assistant said, as she handed back Briene's credit card, along with the receipt. "It's part of our latest stock." She nodded at the dress as she folded it with expert hands and started wrapping it in tissue paper. "That style will suit you better than most, with your height."

"I suppose so," Brienne said.

"Your friend likes it." The sales assistant gave Brienne a knowing little smile.

Brienne suddenly felt slightly sick. That smile said that the sales assistant recognised them—didn't it?

"It's all right. I'm not going to tell anyone you were here," the sales assistant continued in a lower voice, confirming and then assuaging Brienne's fears in the space of a sentence. "It's just nice to see two people happy together."

"Thank you," Brienne said. She really didn't know what else to say.

The sales assistant slipped the dress into a plastic carry bag and handed it to Brienne. "Enjoy wearing the dress—and being seen in it," she said, and then winked—actually _winked_—at Brienne.

"Thank you," Brienne said again, and fled.

"Everything all right?" Jaime asked, as Brienne took his arm in a firm grip and all but dragged him bodily out of the store.

"Fine, absolutely fine," Brienne said, a bit too quickly. She sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.

Jaime gave her a narrow-eyed look, but he didn't comment on it. "What's next?" he asked instead.

"Something for Shae," Brienne said. "I have a general idea of what I want but… Let's hope I know it when I see it."

Jaime's lips twitched. "Lead on," he said and held out his hand, clearly waiting for hers to slip down from his elbow.

He didn't have to wait long. Brienne took his hand, lacing their fingers together. His palm was warm against hers. Warm and solid and safe. She could feel the stress leaching out of her. She was going to have to do without this, to do without the touch of him, before much longer, she reminded herself.

But not tonight.

They walked a little way. And a little further. They walked the entire length of that level of the mall, and nothing caught Brienne's eye.

"Let's try downstairs," Jaime said, so down the escalator they went.

Brienne's fingers curled into fists as the tension started to make itself felt in her shoulders. What if she didn't find anything that was quite right? This was her only chance to get to the shops. Maybe she'd just have to send Bronn out to find something later today and hope for the best. That option did not appeal.

They got to the bottom of the escalator and, as they walked away from it, Brienne couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. It was as though the shop had been waiting for them. It was just off to one side, and it sold gift items clearly aimed at the tourist market, but not just the usual "I ❤️ Australia" earrings, umbrellas and tea towels. The first thing that caught Brienne's eye was a small selection of pendants, each one individual, each one created by a different Indigenous female artist.

And then she saw the scarves. Again, each was an individual creation and each was the work of a different Indigenous female artist, featuring patterns of waves and dots and other shapes in striking colour combinations. Brienne picked up the small card that accompanied one in beautiful blues and greens, with highlights of purple and white, and discovered it was a depiction of a women's dreaming story by a member of a coastal clan. But her eyes kept straying back to a striking scarf featuring a dotted design in red and gold on black. It was like the scarf she'd seen this afternoon, in colouring, but its polar opposite in terms of artistic vision, or lack thereof. The artist was from the desert in Central Australia, according to its little card.

The scarf would look perfect on Shae.

Jaime had been wandering about the shop, without looking at anything much for very long while she'd made her choice of the scarves, and he joined her at the counter, but once Brienne had paid for the scarf, he said, "Wait for me outside. I won't be long."

"Oh?" Brienne asked.

"There's something I want to buy," he said, oh-so-innocently.

Brienne could feel her eyebrows raising almost of their own accord.

"I won't be long," Jaime said, shooing her towards the door.

"All right, then," Brienne said, still eyeing him over her shoulder as she left the store clutching the small brown paper bag with little handles at the top that contained the scarf.

She found a row of seats across from the bottom of the escalator, and sat down with her purchases while she waited for Jaime to buy whatever it was that he didn't want her to know about. She took out the scarf, and laid it across her lap to admire it for a moment before she folded it up again and returned it to its bag. It was just what she'd been hoping to find for Shae, so that was another name crossed off her Christmas list.

That left just one.

Jaime.

Brienne wished she knew the etiquette for situations like this. What, exactly, did one buy for one's holiday fling when both holiday and fling occurred at Christmastime? And what did one do when one's holiday fling was, moreover, the sort of man who was rich enough to buy anything he wanted?

She cast her thoughts back to Christmases past, and inevitably heard her father's voice, as if it were yesterday, reminding her that it wasn't how much something cost that made it a good present. It was about the thought that you put into it, to make sure that it was a present for that person, and not just something that you could give anyone.

All right, then. That was a starting point. So, what did Brienne know for sure that Jaime liked? She thought about it, going right back to when she'd first met him on Sunday morning, a lifetime ago. He liked a cup of tea, she knew that, and also that he wasn't so keen on beetroot lattes. And he liked single malt whiskys from Tasmania. Should she go back to the bottle shop and see if they had any in stock? It was a thought, but the circumstances in which he'd shared his whisky with Brienne hadn't been the happiest. She didn't want to give him a reminder of that particular conversation.

What else? Jaime liked Brienne, that was clear, but she could hardly wrap herself up in a giant bow and wait under the Christmas tree. Well, she could, but not if they were going to be spending Christmas with Shae and Tyrion.

But what else was there? Having sex in an infinity pool at the top of a skyscraper wasn't something that exactly translated well into a present, and besides, Jaime hadn't really been enjoying the 'being in the water' part of it so much by the end.

And if not any of those things, then what? Well, that really only left his car. There could be no doubt that Jaime really loved that car. So, something car-related, but sort of playful? Something that wouldn't immediately conjure up images of that photographer, Locke, running into the back of them? But there was no real way to avoid that, so maybe if instead she got something that could say, "I'm sorry about your car, and here's something that I hope will make you smile in the meantime"? That might work.

Brienne leaned against the back of the chair. They'd passed a shop upstairs that might have the sort of thing that would serve her purpose. Something that would qualify for a silly present. The serious present, though. What could anyone like Brienne give that would be in any way an appropriate gift for someone like Jaime Lannister?

Serious didn't have to mean expensive, though. She'd often given her father presents that weren't worth much—or anything—at all in monetary terms, but they'd been special to her and so they'd been special to him, as well.

Did she have anything special and personal to give Jaime? Well, she did have one thing. Something to let him know that she cared, and would continue to care about his well being after she was gone back to her own life. It would be a wrench to part with it, but the more she thought about it, the more right it felt. It really was the only possible Christmas gift that she could give Jaime, the only thing she had that he truly couldn't get for love or money anywhere else. There was nothing else like it, just as there was no one else quite like him.

She stood up as he came out of the gift shop, carrying a very small paper bag, and waved to get his attention. She could feel the tension leaving her shoulders. The arduous task of Christmas shopping was almost over. Things would be all downhill from here.

~*~

Brienne would be proved right in the coming days, but not quite in the way she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of this story (thank God) but not the end of this series. The prompt for the next story is "summer", and it shouldn't be too long. (Possibly famous last words, but I think it probably really won't be all that long. Probably.)


End file.
